Functional Anatomy and Behavior

Abstract

As emphasized in the Introduction, the choice of the model system is crucial to success in understanding mechanisms underlying motor pattern generation. Serious consideration must be given to the ease with which the nervous system selected is amenable to study by cellular techniques. For this reason, most of the results presented in this book deal primarily with the stomatogastric nervous system and are not devoted to a detailed consideration of the motor functions of the crustacean foregut, per se. However, these results cannot be appreciated without a minimal knowledge of the anatomy of the neuromuscular systems in the foregut and cannot be put into a biological perspective if they do not explain the motor behavior. The goal of this first chapter is: (1) to describe the basic structure of the foregut and the anatomical organization of the muscles and neurons involved in its operation, and (2) to examine the possible range of motor behavior expressed by each region of the foregut in the intact animal.