Joel Glover, Norway

University of Oslo

WG1, WG3, WG6-member

Neural control of movement
Locomotion
Balance and vestibular system
Brain and spinal cord development (especially motor circuits)
Spinal cord injury, regeneration and plasticity
Brain evolution (especially motor circuits)
Human stem cell-based in vitro neurological disease models (especially movement disorders)

Main achievements:

– First demonstration of the requirement of serotonin for animal locomotion (Glover and Kramer, Science, 1984).
– Invented the technique of retrograde labeling using conjugated dextrans, now used world-wide (Glover et al., J. Neurosci. Methods, 1986).
– First demonstration of clonal relationships giving rise to neuron columns in a laminar brain structure, and the progression from symmetric to asymmetric divisions in clones of neural stem cells (Gray et al., PNAS, 1988).
– First description of the development of an identified spinal interneuron in an amniote embryo (Eide and Glover, J. Neurosci., 1996).
– Demonstration of a retinoid-dependent segmental patterning of sympathetic preganglionic neurons (Forehand et al., PNAS, 1998)
– Segmental analyses of reticulospinal and vestibular projection neurons in avians and mammals (Glover and Petursdottir, J. Neurobiol., 1991; Diaz et al., Dev. Biol. 1998; Auclair et al., J. Comp. Neurol., 1999; Pasqualetti et al., J. Neurosci., 2007; DiBonito et al., eNeuro, 2015).
– First demonstration of an in vivo differentiation of adult human non-neural somatic stem cells to neurons (SIgurjonsson et al., PNAS, 2006).
– First characterization using dynamic imaging methods of the emergence of an entire polysynaptic reflex pathway in a vertebrate (Glover et al., submitted).
– Functional characterization of reticulospinal, vestibulospinal and vestibulo-ocular connectivity and development using optical recording techniques (Szokol et al., 2008, 2011; Kasumacic et al., 2010, 2012, 2015; Sivertsen et al., 2014, 2016; Lambert et al., 2016).
– Developed animal model of neonatal spinal cord injury (Boulland et al., 2013; Züchner et al., 2016, 2017; Chawla et al., 2017).

  • Glover, J. C. (2000) The development of specific connectivity between premotor neurons and motoneurons in the brain stem and spinal cord. Physiological Reviews 80:615-647.
  • Szokol K, Glover JC, Perreault MC (2011) Organization of functional synaptic connections between medullary reticulospinal neurons and lumbar descending commissural interneurons in the neonatal mouse. J Neurosci. 31:4731-4742.
  • Boulland JL, Lambert FM, Züchner M, Ström S, Glover JC (2013) A neonatal mouse spinal cord injury model for assessing post-injury adaptive plasticity and human stem cell integration. PLoS One. 8(8):e71701.
  • Kasumacic N, Lambert FM, Coulon P, Bras H, Vinay L, Perreault MC, Glover JC. (2015) Segmental organization of vestibulospinal inputs to spinal interneurons mediating crossed activation of thoracolumbar motoneurons in the neonatal mouse. J Neurosci. 35(21):8158-69.
  • Lambert FM, Bras H, Cardoit L, Vinay L, Coulon P, Glover JC (2016) Early postnatal maturation in vestibulospinal pathways involved in neck and forelimb motor control. Dev Neurobiol. 76(10):1061-1077.