What generates whisking? Focus on: "The whisking rhythm generator: a novel mammalian network for the generation of movement".

@article{CastroAlamancos2007WhatGW,
  title={What generates whisking? Focus on: "The whisking rhythm generator: a novel mammalian network for the generation of movement".},
  author={Manuel A. Castro-Alamancos},
  journal={Journal of neurophysiology},
  year={2007},
  volume={97 3},
  pages={
          1883-4
        }
}
A central goal of neuroscience is to explain how neural networks generate organized and repetitive motor patterns, such as active whisking used by rodents to navigate the environment. Whisking consists of fast rhythmic ellipsoid vibrissae movements through the air and over objects at between 4 and 
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Fluid licking in mice is a rhythmic behavior that is controlled by a central pattern generator (CPG) located in a complex of brainstem nuclei, and sequence variants in or near Apt1a2 strongly modulate expression of the cognate mRNA in multiple brain regions are strongly modulated.

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TLDR
In vivo, the tonic activity of putative serotonergic premotoneurons is positively correlated with the frequency of whisking evoked by cortical stimulation, and these results support the hypothesized novel mammalian mechanism for movement generation in the vibrissa motor system.
Invertebrate Central Pattern Generation Moves along
Serotonin Regulates Rhythmic Whisking
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TLDR
While the lesion did not abolish whisking, it significantly disrupted whisking kinematics, coordination, and temporal organization, suggesting that the observed deficits reflect an imbalance in cortical inputs to a brainstem central pattern generator.
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TLDR
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TLDR
The results demonstrate that rhythmic motor cortex output is capable of driving vibrissa movements on a cycle-by-cycle basis.
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TLDR
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