Spinal circuits encode a map of the trunk to control skin twitches

Abstract

Reflexive skin twitches are stereotypical behaviours, triggered in most mammals by mechanosensory stimuli. The neural circuits controlling this behaviour are thought to lie in the spinal cord, with motor neurons positioned in the lower cervical spinal cord innervating the cutaneous maximus muscle responsible for the twitches. The spatial matching of the motor output to the location of the sensory stimulus points to selective innervation of particular cutaneous maximus motor neurons by specific sensory-responsive circuits organised in a spatially-dependent manner. Using mouse genetics and viral tracing, we observed that a subset of dorso-lateral dI3 neurons forms ascending projections to motor neurons mediating skin twitches. Their projections are somatotopically organized to map a two dimensional space onto specific sub-compartments of the cutaneous maximus motor pool. Furthermore, direct optogenetic stimulation of thoraco-lumbar dI3 ascending projections in the cervical spinal cord induces skin twitches. Together, we demonstrate the circuit basis of a spinal sensory-motor representation of the dorsolateral trunk that participates in an ethological behaviour shared by most mammals allowing them to reduce the burdens of irritants such as insects.