Spatial and Temporal Arrangement of Recurrent Inhibition in the Primate Upper Limb

Abstract

Renshaw cells mediate recurrent inhibition between motoneurons within the spinal cord. The function of this circuit is not clear; we previously suggested based on computational modelling that it may cancel oscillations in muscle activity around 10Hz, thereby reducing physiological tremor. Such tremor is especially problematic for dexterous hand movements, yet knowledge of recurrent inhibitory function is especially sparse for the control of the primate upper limb, where no direct measurements have been made to date. In this study, we made intracellular penetrations into 89 motoneurons in the cervical enlargement of four terminally anesthetized female macaque monkeys, and recorded recurrent IPSPs in response to antidromic stimulation of motor axons. Recurrent inhibition was strongest to motoneurons innervating shoulder muscles and elbow extensors, weak to wrist and digit extensors, and almost absent to the intrinsic muscles of the hand. Recurrent inhibitory connections often spanned joints, for example from motoneurons innervating wrist and digit muscles to those controlling the shoulder and elbow. Wrist and digit flexor motoneurons sometimes inhibited the corresponding extensors, and vice versa. This complex connectivity presumably reflects the flexible usage of the primate upper limb. Using trains of stimuli to motor nerves timed as a Poisson process and coherence analysis, we also examined the temporal properties of recurrent inhibition. The recurrent feedback loop effectively carried frequencies up to 100 Hz, with a coherence peak around 20Hz. The coherence phase validated predictions from our previous computational model, supporting the idea that recurrent inhibition may function to reduce tremor.