Central pattern generators articles from across Nature Portfolio

Bush and Ramirez show that the activity of neuronal populations implicated in generating breathing evolves along a rotational low-dimensional trajectory that is stably maintained even when challenged with opioids but collapses during gasping.

The study by Pallucchi et al. links the molecular identity of motoneuron and V2a interneuron subtypes to their function and uncovers orthogonal transcriptomic rules for their assembly into separate circuit modules controlling locomotor speed.

Chaos theory eases the path of autonomous robots.