Slow Dorsal-Ventral Rhythm Generator in the Lamprey Spinal Cord

In the isolated lamprey spinal cord, a very slow rhythm (0.03–0.11 Hz), superimposed on fast N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA)-induced locomotor activity (0.26–2.98 Hz), could be induced by a blockade of GABAA or glycine receptors or by administration of (1 s, 3 s)-l-aminocyclopentane-1,3-dicarboxylic acid a metabotropic glutamate receptor agonist. Ventral root branches supplying dorsal and ventral myotomes were exposed bilaterally to study the motor pattern in detail. The slow rhythm was expressed in two main forms: 1) a dorsal-ventral reciprocal pattern was the most common (18 of 24 preparations), in which bilateral dorsal branches were synchronous and alternated with the ventral branches, in two additional cases a diagonal dorsal-ventral reciprocal pattern with alternation between the left (or right) dorsal and the right (or left) ventral branches was observed; 2) synchronous bursting in all branches was encountered in four cases. In contrast, the fast locomotor rhythm occurred always in a left-right reciprocal pattern. Thus when the slow rhythm appeared in a dorsal-ventral reciprocal pattern, fast rhythms would simultaneously display left-right alternation. A longitudinal midline section of the spinal cord during ongoing slow bursting abolished the reciprocal pattern between ipsilateral dorsal and ventral branches but a synchronous burst activity could still remain. The fast swimming rhythm did not recover after the midline section. These results suggest that in addition to the network generating the swimming rhythm in the lamprey spinal cord, there is also a network providing slow reciprocal alternation between dorsal and ventral parts of the myotome. During steering, a selective activation of dorsal and ventral myotomes is required and the neural network generating the slow rhythm may represent activity in the spinal machinery used for steering.