How does a 560-million-year-old fish illuminate the control architecture behind all vertebrate movement? Sten Grillner traces the neural circuits of locomotion from lamprey spinal cord to human basal ganglia.

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Sten Grillner presents decades of work on the lamprey, a jawless fish that emerged during the Cambrian explosion, as a model for understanding the conserved control systems underlying vertebrate motor behavior. He explains how the lamprey's spinal cord contains approximately 100 central pattern generators (CPGs) that produce rhythmic swimming through the interplay of excitatory premotor interneurons, inhibitory coordination neurons, and critical membrane properties including NMDA receptors, voltage-dependent calcium channels, and calcium-activated potassium ch ...