corticospinal tract
1
7.6
- noun
- /ˌkɔːrtɪkoʊˈspaɪnəl træk/
- Specialized
:
tracto corticoespinal
- Doctors study the corticospinal tract to understand how movement signals are transmitted in the body.
Examples
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Damage to the corticospinal tract can lead to muscle weakness and coordination issues.
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And then they're just called corticospinal tract axons in when they're inside the the spinal cord, OK.
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So with the active forebrain and corticospinal tract and cortical cortex to hind brain mechanisms, you get the behavior that that would cause.
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The corticospinal tract carries important motor signals from the brain to the spinal cord.
Synonyms
Bundles of nerves from the brain to the spinal cord that control movements you choose
Nerves from the brain that control movements you make on purpose
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is fully compositional: 'corticospinal' specifies fibers from the cerebral cortex to the spinal cord and 'tract' denotes a pathway, so together they denote the pathway of those fibers. Although the vocabulary is technical, the meaning follows transparent medical compounding (cortex + spinal + tract) and would be clear to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Corticospinal tract comes from two parts: cortex (the brain's outer area) and spinal cord (the long nerve bundle in the back). Imagine a highway running from the brain down the spine that carries 'commands for movement', so the term means the nerve pathway that tells muscles to move.