Spinal motoneurons

Abstract

In a sense, motoneurons are arguably the most important class of neurons in the central nervous system (CNS) because without them, we could neither move nor breathe. Over a century ago, the great English physiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington, recognized that at the termination of every reflex arc we find a final neurone, the ultimate conductive link to an effector organ, gland or muscle. Sherrington named these final neurons motor neurons (or motoneurons in most papers today) and called them the final common path that receives information from many sources both within and outside of the central nervous system, integrating this information and transmitting it to the muscle fibers that they innervate. Since Sherrington's time, motoneurons have been extensively studied because of their critical role in the control of all movement in both invertebrate and vertebrate animals. In a real sense, motoneurons are one of only a very few categories of millions of neurons in the central nervous system (CNS) that have a clearly defined function - to cause activation of muscle fibers.