Sustained Responses to Brief Stimuli: Swimming in Xenopus Embryos

Prolonged responses to brief triggering or releasing stimuli are commonplace in animal behaviour. The initiation of locomotion is an example but hypotheses for the central nervous origin of locomotory rhythms generally do not explain how activity is sustained. After a brief review, which suggests that positive feedback excitation could be involved, evidence from Xenopus embryos is considered. Here a brief skin stimulus can evoke long episodes of swimming even in curarized embryos. Feedback excitation provides a possible explanation for sustaining fictive swimming. This hypothesis is evaluated by simulation of simple neuronal networks using a physiologically realistic digital computer modelling programme. The results from simulations suggest that: (1) positive feedback excitation could sustain activity either in central pattern generators for locomotion or in postural motor systems and (2) that the model networks tested here are not appropriate to produce the pattern of motor output from the Xenopus embryo spinal cord.