Ari Berkowitz
Associate Professor, Zoology Richards Hall 102 & 103 405-325-3492 ari at ou dot edu http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/B/Robert.A.Berkowitz-1/ Ph.D., Neurosciences - Washington University, St. Louis, 1993RESEARCH:
How does an animal's nervous system select and generate an appropriate behavior for each circumstance the animal faces? Our research addresses this general question through electrophysiological, neuroanatomical, and pharmacological experiments on an especially suitable model system: the turtle spinal cord. The turtle spinal cord can produce three distinct types of rhythmic scratching movements of a hindlimb, each targeted to a different region of the body surface, as well as hindlimb withdrawal movements and rhythmic hindlimb swimming movements. The programs for generating these movements reside in the spinal cord: the animal can produce these movements appropriately even when all input from the brain is removed. Our research investigates how the spinal cord does this. We have shown that the spinal cord uses a combination of shared and behaviorally specialized neurons to generate distinct limb movements. We aim to determine how these shared and specialized neurons act to produce each kind of movement.
Selected Publications:
Berkowitz, A. (2009) Population Coding. In: Larry R. Squire, Ed., Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, Academic Press, Oxford, pp. 757-764.
Berkowitz, A. (2008) Physiology and morphology of shared and specialized spinal interneurons for locomotion and scratching. J. Neurophysiol., 99: 2887-2901.
Berkowitz, A. (2007) Spinal interneurons that are selectively activated during fictive flexion reflex. J. Neurosci., 27: 4634-4641.
Berkowitz, A., Yosten, G. L. C., & Ballard, R. M. (2006) Somato-dendritic morphology predicts physiology for neurons that contribute to several kinds of limb movements. J. Neurophysiol., 95: 2821-2831.
Berkowitz, A. (2005) Physiology and morphology indicate that individual spinal interneurons contribute to diverse limb movements. J. Neurophysiol., 94: 4455-4470.
Berkowitz, A. (2004) Propriospinal projections to the ventral horn of the rostral and caudal hindlimb enlargement in turtles. Brain Res., 1014: 164-176.
Berkowitz, A. (2002) Both shared and specialized spinal circuitry for scratching and swimming in turtles. J. Comp. Physiol. A, 188: 225-234.
Berkowitz, A. (2001) Broadly tuned spinal neurons for each form of fictive scratching in spinal turtles. J. Neurophysiol., 86: 1017-1025.
Berkowitz, A. (2001) Rhythmicity of spinal neurons activated during each form of fictive scratching in spinal turtles. J. Neurophysiol., 86: 1026-1036.