Role of Inhibition in the Local Bend Response of the Medicinal Leech
Eighth International Congress of Neuroethology, Vancouver, Canada, 2007. Prog. no. PO226
When a leech is touched anywhere on its body longitudinal and circular muscles locally contract while contralateral muscles relax causing the leech to bend away from the touch location. We quantified the kinematics of this "local bend response" by analyzing the motions of a piece of body wall innervated by a single ganglion in response to force-controlled mechanical stimuli. Blocking GABA-A receptors in the ganglion resulted in a dramatic increase in the amplitude and speed of the local contraction while the contralateral relaxation was reduced abolished or even inverted. This shows an important role for inhibitory signaling in tuning the response.