- Cattaert D. et Le Ray D. (2001) Adaptive motor control in crayfish. Prog. Neurobiol. 63, 199-240.

I have a special attachment to this review which places a large part of my work (initiated during my PhD) on the sensory-motor network that controls postural and locomotor movements of a single leg into the whole neurobiological context of crayfish motor control. All aspects of sensory-motor networks are evoked in this work, from network wiring to neuromodulation and synaptic plasticity.

 

- Le Ray D., Brocard F., Bourcier-Lucas C., Auclair F., Lafaille P. et Dubuc R. (2003) Nicotinic activation of reticulospinal cells involved in the control of swimming in lampreys. Eur. J. Neurosci. 17, 137-148. Le Ray D., Brocard F. et Dubuc R. (2004) Muscarinic modulation of the trigemino-reticular pathway in lampreys. J. Neurophysiol. 92, 926-938. Le Ray D., Juvin L., Boutin T., Auclair F. et Dubuc R. (2010) The mesencephalic locomotor region directly controls trigeminal inputs to reticulospinal neurons in lampreys. Eur. J. Neurosci. 32, 53-59.

In this series of papers initiated during my second post-doc in Montreal, we investigated the different functions of the mesencephalic locomotor region (MLR) involved in locomotion. In addition to exploring the neurobiology of its classically described role in controlling the intensity of locomotor function, we demonstrated and decyphered a novel role of the MLR in filtering sensory inputs that impact on brainstem command cells during locomotion.

 

- Le Ray D., Fernández de Sevilla D., Porto A.B. Fuenzalida M. et Buño W. (2004) Heterosynaptic metaplastic regulation of synaptic efficacy in CA1 pyramidal neurons of rat hippocampus. Hippocampus 14, 1011-1025.

This work, conducted during my first post-doc in Madrid, allowed me to ‘play’ with the cellular properties of central neurons and analyze their role in the control of synaptic plasticity induction. This paper shows how, via plasticity of the slow afterhyperpolarization in postsynaptic CA1 pyramidal cells, a previous LTP induced at a given CA3-CA1 synapse was able to transiently inhibit the induction of LTP at other CA1 input synapses. At the time this work was carried out (1998), it was the first demonstration of a physiological metaplastic phenomenon at the cellular level.

 

- Beyeler A., Métais C., Combes D., Simmers J. et Le Ray D. (2008) Metamorphosis-induced changes in the coupling of thoraco-lumbar motor outputs during swimming in Xenopus laevis. J. Neurophysiol. 100, 1372-1383. Combes D., Le Ray D., Lambert F., Simmers J. et Straka H. (2008) An intrinsic feed-forward mechanism for vertebrate gaze stabilization. Curr. Biol. 18, R241-243.

These last papers correspond to my ‘new life’ as a researcher in Neurobiology, with the arrival of the metamorphosing Xenopus as an experimental model and the rise of totally new questions. This incredible model offers the oportunity to investigate in a vertebrate many points that remain unclear, such as the functional roles of propriospinal connectivity, the coordination between different motor functions and, more recently, the physiological determinants of motor network design during development.