NIH R01 · 2025
Functional and Structural Diversity in Hypoglossal Motoneurons
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Tongue muscles, which are innervated by hypoglossal motoneurons (XIIMNs), are critical for survival given their role in suckling, swallowing, mastication, breathing and more advanced functions such as human speech. The hypoglossal motor nucleus is a bilateral collection of seven separate motoneuron pools, with motoneurons in each pool innervating one of the seven different tongue muscles. We recently showed that XIIMNs innervating the superior longitudinalis and genioglossus tongue muscles of neonatal rats have significantly different resting membrane potentials, action potential firing thresholds, and f-I curves, i.e., the change in firing rate as a function of…
From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.