The Levine Lab

Our Vision

 

How does the nervous system enact behavior? We're fascinated by the stream of actions that animals and humans perform every waking minute.

 

In our view, the fundamental role of the nervous system is motor control, and the final point of neural control over most movement is in the spinal cord. It contains the motoneurons that drive our muscles, the immediate premotor neurons that are the primary regulators of motoneuron activity, and the broader, as-yet-undefined networks of spinal neurons that integrate sensory information and can autonomously orchestrate coordinated movements even without input from the brain.

 

Therefore, it is amongst the cells and circuits of the spinal cord that we hope to discover a neuronal basis for movement and the keys to unlock motor recovery in patients with spinal cord injury.