Definition of "motor neuron" []

• A neuron that conveys impulses from the central nervous system to a muscle, gland, or other effector tissue. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Kerr had to find a way to prompt these undifferentiated mouse embryonic stem cells to differentiate into motor neuron cells in such a way that they would go on to create axonal nerves covered with myelin sheaths—a fatty insulating tissue—that together make up the elaborate electrical highway that constitutes the nervous system."
• "Kerr knew that if he were to succeed in stimulating the regrowth of axonal nerves and myelin sheaths—the kind of growth that happens naturally during a mammal’s fetal development—he would need to give each embryonic motor neuron cell the strength, power, and precise signals necessary to tell it exactly where to go in the nervous system and what axonal nerves to redevelop once it landed there."