Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

16 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Millisecond-scale motor encoding in a cortical vocal area.

ABSTRACT: Studies of motor control have almost universally examined firing rates to investigate how the brain shapes behavior. In principle, however, neurons could encode information through the precise temporal patterning of their spike trains as well as (or instead of) through their firing rates. Although the importance of spike timing has been demonstrated in sensory systems, it is largely unknown whether timing differences in motor areas could affect behavior. We tested the hypothesis that significant information about trial-by-trial variations in behavior is represented by spike timing in the songbird vocal motor system. We found that neurons in motor cortex convey information via spike timing far more often than via spike rate and that the amount of information conveyed at the millisecond timescale greatly exceeds the information available from spike counts. These results demonstrate that information can be represented by spike timing in motor circuits and suggest that timing variations evoke differences in behavior.

SUBMITTER: Tang C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4260785 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Publications

Millisecond-scale motor encoding in a cortical vocal area.

Tang Claire C Chehayeb Diala D Srivastava Kyle K Nemenman Ilya I Sober Samuel J SJ

PLoS biology 20141209 12

Studies of motor control have almost universally examined firing rates to investigate how the brain shapes behavior. In principle, however, neurons could encode information through the precise temporal patterning of their spike trains as well as (or instead of) through their firing rates. Although the importance of spike timing has been demonstrated in sensory systems, it is largely unknown whether timing differences in motor areas could affect behavior. We tested the hypothesis that significant ...[more]

PMID: 25490022

Similar Datasets

Instructive signals for motor learning from visual cortical area MT.

Project description:Sensory error signals have long been proposed to act as instructive signals to guide motor learning. Here we have exploited the temporal specificity of learning in smooth pursuit eye movements and the well-defined anatomical structure of the neural circuit for pursuit to identify a part of sensory cortex that provides instructive signals for motor learning in monkeys. We show that electrical microstimulation in the motion-sensitive middle temporal area (MT) of extrastriate visual cortex instructs learning in smooth eye movements in a way that closely mimics the learning instructed by real visual motion. We conclude that MT provides instructive signals for motor learning in smooth pursuit eye movements under natural conditions, suggesting a similar role for sensory cortices in many kinds of learned behaviors.

| S-EPMC2430765 | biostudies-literature

Distinct timescales for the neuronal encoding of vocal signals in a high-order auditory area.

Project description:The ability of the auditory system to selectively recognize natural sound categories while maintaining a certain degree of tolerance towards variations within these categories, which may have functional roles, is thought to be crucial for vocal communication. To date, it is still largely unknown how the balance between tolerance and sensitivity to variations in acoustic signals is coded at a neuronal level. Here, we investigate whether neurons in a high-order auditory area in zebra finches, a songbird species, are sensitive to natural variations in vocal signals by recording their responses to repeated exposures to identical and variant sound sequences. We used the songs of male birds which tend to be highly repetitive with only subtle variations between renditions. When playing these songs to both anesthetized and awake birds, we found that variations between songs did not affect the neuron firing rate but the temporal reliability of responses. This suggests that auditory processing operates on a range of distinct timescales, namely a short one to detect variations in vocal signals, and longer ones that allow the birds to tolerate variations in vocal signal structure and to encode the global context.

| S-EPMC8490347 | biostudies-literature

An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units.

Project description:How are brain circuits constructed to achieve complex goals? The brains of young songbirds develop motor circuits that achieve the goal of imitating a specific tutor song to which they are exposed. Here, we set out to examine how song-generating circuits may be influenced early in song learning by a cortical region (NIf) at the interface between auditory and motor systems. Single-unit recordings reveal that, during juvenile babbling, NIf neurons burst at syllable onsets, with some neurons exhibiting selectivity for particular emerging syllable types. When juvenile birds listen to their tutor, NIf neurons are also activated at tutor syllable onsets, and are often selective for particular syllable types. We examine a simple computational model in which tutor exposure imprints the correct number of syllable patterns as ensembles in an interconnected NIf network. These ensembles are then reactivated during singing to train a set of syllable sequences in the motor network.

| S-EPMC7538968 | biostudies-literature

Large-scale genomics unveil polygenic architecture of human cortical surface area.

Project description:Little is known about how genetic variation contributes to neuroanatomical variability, and whether particular genomic regions comprising genes or evolutionarily conserved elements are enriched for effects that influence brain morphology. Here, we examine brain imaging and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) data from ∼2,700 individuals. We show that a substantial proportion of variation in cortical surface area is explained by additive effects of SNPs dispersed throughout the genome, with a larger heritable effect for visual and auditory sensory and insular cortices (h(2)∼0.45). Genome-wide SNPs collectively account for, on average, about half of twin heritability across cortical regions (N=466 twins). We find enriched genetic effects in or near genes. We also observe that SNPs in evolutionarily more conserved regions contributed significantly to the heritability of cortical surface area, particularly, for medial and temporal cortical regions. SNPs in less conserved regions contributed more to occipital and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices.

| S-EPMC4518289 | biostudies-literature

Myosin dynamics on the millisecond time scale.

Project description:Myosin is a motor protein associating with actin and ATP. It translates along actin filaments against a force by transduction of free energy liberated with ATP hydrolysis. Various myosin crystal structures define time points during ATPase showing the protein undergoes large conformation change during transduction over a cycle with approximately 10 ms periodicity. The protein conformation trajectory between two intermediates in the cycle is surmised by non-equilibrium Monte Carlo simulation utilizing free-energy minimization. The trajectory shows myosin transduction of free energy to mechanical work giving evidence for: (i) a causal relationship between product release and work production in the native isoform that is correctly disrupted in a chemically modified protein, (ii) the molecular basis of ATP-sensitive tryptophan fluorescence enhancement and acrylamide quenching, (iii) an actin-binding site peptide containing the free-energy barrier to ATPase product release defining the rate limiting step and, (iv) a scenario for actin-activation of myosin ATPase.

| S-EPMC2505346 | biostudies-literature

Millisecond encoding precision of auditory cortex neurons.

Project description:Neurons in auditory cortex are central to our perception of sounds. However, the underlying neural codes, and the relevance of millisecond-precise spike timing in particular, remain debated. Here, we addressed this issue in the auditory cortex of alert nonhuman primates by quantifying the amount of information carried by precise spike timing about complex sounds presented for extended periods of time (random tone sequences and natural sounds). We investigated the dependence of stimulus information on the temporal precision at which spike times were registered and found that registering spikes at a precision coarser than a few milliseconds significantly reduced the encoded information. This dependence demonstrates that auditory cortex neurons can carry stimulus information at high temporal precision. In addition, we found that the main determinant of finely timed information was rapid modulation of the firing rate, whereas higher-order correlations between spike times contributed negligibly. Although the neural coding precision was high for random tone sequences and natural sounds, the information lost at a precision coarser than a few milliseconds was higher for the stimulus sequence that varied on a faster time scale (random tones), suggesting that the precision of cortical firing depends on the stimulus dynamics. Together, these results provide a neural substrate for recently reported behavioral relevance of precisely timed activity patterns with auditory cortex. In addition, they highlight the importance of millisecond-precise neural coding as general functional principle of auditory processing--from the periphery to cortex.

| S-EPMC2947890 | biostudies-other

Topographic precision in sensory and motor corticostriatal projections varies across cell type and cortical area.

Project description:The striatum shows general topographic organization and regional differences in behavioral functions. How corticostriatal topography differs across cortical areas and cell types to support these distinct functions is unclear. This study contrasted corticostriatal projections from two layer 5 cell types, intratelencephalic (IT-type) and pyramidal tract (PT-type) neurons, using viral vectors expressing fluorescent reporters in Cre-driver mice. Corticostriatal projections from sensory and motor cortex are somatotopic, with a decreasing topographic specificity as injection sites move from sensory to motor and frontal areas. Topographic organization differs between IT-type and PT-type neurons, including injections in the same site, with IT-type neurons having higher topographic stereotypy than PT-type neurons. Furthermore, IT-type projections from interconnected cortical areas have stronger correlations in corticostriatal targeting than PT-type projections do. As predicted by a longstanding model, corticostriatal projections of interconnected cortical areas form parallel circuits in the basal ganglia.

| S-EPMC6120881 | biostudies-other

Neural correlates of perceptual learning in a sensory-motor, but not a sensory, cortical area.

Project description:This study aimed to identify neural mechanisms that underlie perceptual learning in a visual-discrimination task. We trained two monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to determine the direction of visual motion while we recorded from their middle temporal area (MT), which in trained monkeys represents motion information that is used to solve the task, and lateral intraparietal area (LIP), which represents the transformation of motion information into a saccadic choice. During training, improved behavioral sensitivity to weak motion signals was accompanied by changes in motion-driven responses of neurons in LIP, but not in MT. The time course and magnitude of the changes in LIP correlated with the changes in behavioral sensitivity throughout training. Thus, for this task, perceptual learning does not appear to involve improvements in how sensory information is represented in the brain, but rather how the sensory representation is interpreted to form the decision that guides behavior.

| S-EPMC2424192 | biostudies-literature

The alpha-helix folds on the millisecond time scale.

Project description:It has long been believed that nucleation of the alpha-helix is a very fast reaction, occurring in around 10(-7) s. We show here that helix nucleation, in fact, takes place on the millisecond time scale. The rate of alpha-helix nucleation in two polyalanine-based peptides and in lysine and glutamic acid homopolymers was measured directly by stopped-flow deep UV CD with synchrotron radiation as the light source. Synchrotron radiation CD gives far superior signal to noise than a conventional instrument. The 16-aa AK peptide folds with first-order kinetics and a rate constant of 15 s-1 at 0 degrees C. The rate-determining step is presumably the initiation of a new helix, which occurs at least 10(5) times slower than expected. Helix folding occurs in at least two steps on the millisecond time scale for the longer peptides, with a transient overshoot of helix content significantly greater than at equilibrium, similar to that seen in the folding of several proteins. We suggest that the overshoot is caused by the formation of a single long helix followed by its breakage into the two or more helices present at equilibrium.

| S-EPMC22062 | biostudies-literature

Cell type specializations of the vocal-motor cortex in songbirds

Project description:The identification of molecular specializations in cortical circuitry supporting complex behaviors, such as learned vocalizations, requires understanding the neuroanatomical context from which these circuits arise. In songbirds, the robust nucleus of the arcopallium (RA) provides the sole descending projection for fine motor control of vocalizations. Using single nuclei transcriptomics and spatial gene expression mapping in zebra finches, we were able to define cell types and molecular specializations that distinguish RA from adjacent regions involved in non-vocal motor and sensory processing. We describe an RA-specific vocal projection neuron, differential composition of inhibitory neuron subtypes, and unique glial specializations. We show how several cell-specific molecular features arise in a sex-dependent manner during development. Based on the molecular data, we were also able to electrophysiologically probe, for the first time, predicted GABAergic subtypes within RA. To facilitate future utilization of the data, we have developed interactive apps that allow integration of cell level molecular data with developmental and spatial distribution data from our gene expression brain atlas (ZEBrA). With this resource, users can explore molecular specializations of vocal-motor neurons and support cells that likely reflect adaptations key to the physiology and evolution of vocal control circuits.

2023-06-10 | GSE233643 | GEO

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data