R. Brian Roome
@rbrianroome.bsky.social
56 followers 71 following 7 posts
Research associate, Kania lab, IRCM. Investigating formation and function of spinal cord sensory and ascending circuits. Avid balcony gardener and amateur musician. Views are my own.
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Reposted by R. Brian Roome
beatolab.bsky.social
An absolutely lovely paper, if I may say so... Joint effort from @tuanbuilab.bsky.social, Turgay Akay, and the Beatostone lab, aka Rob Brownstone's lab and mine
remironzano.bsky.social
Do comparator modules exist within spinal circuits? Here, we show that spinal dI3 neurons integrate multimodal sensory feedback, receive direct efference copy from Renshaw cells, and mediate corrections of ongoing movements. Thank you so much to everyone involved!!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Evidence of spinal cord comparator modules for rapid corrections of movements
Successful movement requires continuous adjustments in response to changes in internal and external environments. To do so, neural circuits continuously compare efference copies of motor commands with sensory input to respond to sensory prediction errors. Some responses need to be very fast and, for limbs, likely occur in as yet undefined spinal cord circuits. Here, we describe spinal circuits involving dI3 neurons, showing that they receive multimodal sensory inputs and direct efferent copies from both Renshaw cells and motor neurons. We further show that they form connections to motor pools, including diverging connections to antagonist motor nuclei. Reducing dI3 neuronal activity diminished stumbling responses, as did disrupting Renshaw cell circuits, providing evidence for a comparator role of dI3 neurons for online corrections. Together, our findings reveal a pivotal role for dI3 neurons functioning as comparators of internal predictions and external sensory feedback to mediate rapid corrections of ongoing movements. ### Competing Interest Statement Robert M. Brownstone is a co-founder and director of Sania Therapeutics Inc. Wellcome Trust, https://ror.org/029chgv08, 221610/Z/20/Z, 227433/Z/23/Z, 225674/Z/22/Z Royal Society, NIF\R1\192316 Canadian Institutes of Health Research, https://ror.org/01gavpb45, PJT 180556, PJT 162357 Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, BB/S005943/1
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by R. Brian Roome
rbrianroome.bsky.social
With the two orthogonal factors – birth time and and a gradient of Zic genes – we are able to describe the mechanisms of cellular diversity and structure which come together to produce the dorsal horn! Message me and let’s start figuring out what this diversity means for spinal cord physiology! 7/7
rbrianroome.bsky.social
Inhibitory neurons from the same family vary by Zic expression: Rorb neurons express lots of Zic and Satb2 neurons express almost none, and this directs their laminar position. Loss of Zics = drop of Rorb, increase in Satb2 neurons, and so on for each family. 6/n
rbrianroome.bsky.social
Well, time isn’t everything! We find a progenitor gradient of the Zic genes which are imprinted onto dorsal horn neurons as they’re born. 5/n
rbrianroome.bsky.social
Excitatory neurons are particularly crucial – only when you lose excitatory neurons does laminar structure collapse.

Inhibitory neurons also are born in a sequence of families though – but not quite so neatly. Despite that, they are way more diverse. So what else is going on? 4/n
rbrianroome.bsky.social
By birthdating families of dorsal horn neurons, we show that the order excitatory neurons are born in is the order of their laminae! Here, time is structure! 3/n
rbrianroome.bsky.social
We show a new embryonic single-cell spinal cord atlas, hugely expanding the types of known neurons. We see the usual crowd, plus large families of dorsal excitatory (dILB) and inhibitory (dILA) neurons which match the families described postnatally. dILB3 = Grp family, dILA5 = Pdyn family, etc. 2/n
rbrianroome.bsky.social
Check out my postdoc work at Ariel Levine’s lab, hot and fresh, describing how you build a dorsal horn!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...