Material below summarizes the article Loss of Projections, Functional Compensation, and Residual Deficits in the Mammalian Vestibulospinal System of Hoxb1-Deficient Mice, published on November 23, 2015, in eNeuro and authored by Maria Di Bonito, Jean-Luc Boulland, Wojciech Krezel, Eya Setti, Michèle Studer, and Joel C. Glover.
Sense of balance is an essential element in our relationship to the external world. Lose it and we risk becoming disoriented, which could prove fatal if it occurs at an inopportune moment. Incorporating a sensorimotor system that detects changes in position and generates compensatory movements was therefore an early evolutionary innovation — one that nearly all multicellular animals possess and has developed into the vestibular system in humans and other vertebrates.
Given its ancient origins, one might expect that constructing the vestibular system during embryonic and fetal development relies on highly conserved genetic programs. Several indications of this have been reported previously, including work from our laboratories. But there is still little knowledge about how this is achieved.
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