Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

0 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Mechanisms that allow cortical preparatory activity without inappropriate movement.

ABSTRACT: We reveal a novel mechanism that explains how preparatory activity can evolve in motor-related cortical areas without prematurely inducing movement. The smooth eye movement region of the frontal eye fields (FEFSEM) is a critical node in the neural circuit controlling smooth pursuit eye movement. Preparatory activity evolves in the monkey FEFSEM during fixation in parallel with an objective measure of visual-motor gain. We propose that the use of FEFSEM output as a gain signal rather than a movement command allows for preparation to progress in pursuit without causing movement. We also show that preparatory modulation of firing rate in FEFSEM predicts movement, providing evidence against the 'movement-null' space hypothesis as an explanation of how preparatory activity can progress without movement. Finally, there is a partial reorganization of FEFSEM population activity between preparation and movement that would allow for a directionally non-specific component of preparatory visual-motor gain enhancement in pursuit.

SUBMITTER: Darlington TR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7060051 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Publications

Mechanisms that allow cortical preparatory activity without inappropriate movement.

Darlington Timothy R TR Lisberger Stephen G SG

eLife 20200221

We reveal a novel mechanism that explains how preparatory activity can evolve in motor-related cortical areas without prematurely inducing movement. The smooth eye movement region of the frontal eye fields (FEFSEM) is a critical node in the neural circuit controlling smooth pursuit eye movement. Preparatory activity evolves in the monkey FEFSEM during fixation in parallel with an objective measure of visual-motor gain. We propose that the use of FEFSEM output as ...[more]

PMID: 32081130

Similar Datasets

Cortical preparatory activity: representation of movement or first cog in a dynamical machine?

Project description:The motor cortices are active during both movement and movement preparation. A common assumption is that preparatory activity constitutes a subthreshold form of movement activity: a neuron active during rightward movements becomes modestly active during preparation of a rightward movement. We asked whether this pattern of activity is, in fact, observed. We found that it was not: at the level of a single neuron, preparatory tuning was weakly correlated with movement-period tuning. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, preparatory tuning could be captured by a preferred direction in an abstract "space" that described the population-level pattern of movement activity. In fact, this relationship accounted for preparatory responses better than did traditional tuning models. These results are expected if preparatory activity provides the initial state of a dynamical system whose evolution produces movement activity. Our results thus suggest that preparatory activity may not represent specific factors, and may instead play a more mechanistic role.

| S-EPMC2991102 | biostudies-literature

Cortical preparatory activity indexes learned motor memories.

Project description:The brain's remarkable ability to learn and execute various motor behaviours harnesses the capacity of neural populations to generate a variety of activity patterns. Here we explore systematic changes in preparatory activity in motor cortex that accompany motor learning. We trained rhesus monkeys to learn an arm-reaching task1 in a curl force field that elicited new muscle forces for some, but not all, movement directions2,3. We found that in a neural subspace predictive of hand forces, changes in preparatory activity tracked the learned behavioural modifications and reassociated4 existing activity patterns with updated movements. Along a neural population dimension orthogonal to the force-predictive subspace, we discovered that preparatory activity shifted uniformly for all movement directions, including those unaltered by learning. During a washout period when the curl field was removed, preparatory activity gradually reverted in the force-predictive subspace, but the uniform shift persisted. These persistent preparatory activity patterns may retain a motor memory of the learned field5,6 and support accelerated relearning of the same curl field. When a set of distinct curl fields was learned in sequence, we observed a corresponding set of field-specific uniform shifts which separated the associated motor memories in the neural state space7-9. The precise geometry of these uniform shifts in preparatory activity could serve to index motor memories, facilitating the acquisition, retention and retrieval of a broad motor repertoire.

| S-EPMC9851374 | biostudies-literature

Cortical activity in the null space: permitting preparation without movement.

Project description:Neural circuits must perform computations and then selectively output the results to other circuits. Yet synapses do not change radically at millisecond timescales. A key question then is: how is communication between neural circuits controlled? In motor control, brain areas directly involved in driving movement are active well before movement begins. Muscle activity is some readout of neural activity, yet it remains largely unchanged during preparation. Here we find that during preparation, while the monkey holds still, changes in motor cortical activity cancel out at the level of these population readouts. Motor cortex can thereby prepare the movement without prematurely causing it. Further, we found evidence that this mechanism also operates in dorsal premotor cortex, largely accounting for how preparatory activity is attenuated in primary motor cortex. Selective use of 'output-null' vs. 'output-potent' patterns of activity may thus help control communication to the muscles and between these brain areas.

| S-EPMC3955357 | biostudies-literature

Effects of amplitude cueing on postural responses and preparatory cortical activity of people with Parkinson disease.

Project description:Persons with Parkinson disease (PD) are unable to modify their postural responses, and show an associated increase in cortical preparatory activity for anticipated postural perturbations. In this study we asked whether participants with PD could modify their postural responses and cortical preparatory activity when cued to focus on increasing movement amplitude before a series of predictable postural perturbations.Twelve participants with PD performed postural responses to 30 identical backward surface translations. We cued participants to focus on increasing movement amplitude, and examined the effects of cueing by measuring postural responses (center-of-pressure initial rate of change, automatic postural response stability, peak trunk flexion, peak ankle extension) and preparatory cortical activity (electroencephalographic measures of contingent negative variation, alpha and beta event-related desynchronization).Participants with PD modified their postural responses during the amplitude trials by increasing trunk flexion, slowing center-of-pressure initial rate of change, and decreasing automatic postural response stability. However, no significant differences in contingent negative variation amplitude or alpha or beta event-related desynchronization were observed with versus without amplitude cueing.Persons with PD were able to modify their feet-in-place postural responses with amplitude cueing. These changes were not associated with changes in cortical preparation during amplitude cue trials, suggesting that other regions or measures of brain function were responsible for changes in postural responses. Future studies are needed to determine the effects of long-term amplitude-cueing practice on cortical preparation and postural stability.Video Abstract available. See Video (Supplemental Digital Content 1, http://links.lww.com/JNPT/A78) for more insights from the authors.

| S-EPMC4322905 | biostudies-literature

Reorganization between preparatory and movement population responses in motor cortex.

Project description:Neural populations can change the computation they perform on very short timescales. Although such flexibility is common, the underlying computational strategies at the population level remain unknown. To address this gap, we examined population responses in motor cortex during reach preparation and movement. We found that there exist exclusive and orthogonal population-level subspaces dedicated to preparatory and movement computations. This orthogonality yielded a reorganization in response correlations: the set of neurons with shared response properties changed completely between preparation and movement. Thus, the same neural population acts, at different times, as two separate circuits with very different properties. This finding is not predicted by existing motor cortical models, which predict overlapping preparation-related and movement-related subspaces. Despite orthogonality, responses in the preparatory subspace were lawfully related to subsequent responses in the movement subspace. These results reveal a population-level strategy for performing separate but linked computations.

| S-EPMC5095296 | biostudies-literature

Selective Modulation of Early Visual Cortical Activity by Movement Intention.

Project description:The primate visual system contains myriad feedback projections from higher- to lower-order cortical areas, an architecture that has been implicated in the top-down modulation of early visual areas during working memory and attention. Here we tested the hypothesis that these feedback projections also modulate early visual cortical activity during the planning of visually guided actions. We show, across three separate human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies involving object-directed movements, that information related to the motor effector to be used (i.e., limb, eye) and action goal to be performed (i.e., grasp, reach) can be selectively decoded-prior to movement-from the retinotopic representation of the target object(s) in early visual cortex. We also find that during the planning of sequential actions involving objects in two different spatial locations, that motor-related information can be decoded from both locations in retinotopic cortex. Together, these findings indicate that movement planning selectively modulates early visual cortical activity patterns in an effector-specific, target-centric, and task-dependent manner. These findings offer a neural account of how motor-relevant target features are enhanced during action planning and suggest a possible role for early visual cortex in instituting a sensorimotor estimate of the visual consequences of movement.

| S-EPMC6917518 | biostudies-literature

Driving strategy alters neuronal responses to self-movement: cortical mechanisms of distracted driving.

Project description:We presented naturalistic combinations of virtual self-movement stimuli while recording neuronal activity in monkey cerebral cortex. Monkeys used a joystick to drive to a straight ahead heading direction guided by either object motion or optic flow. The selected cue dominates neuronal responses, often mimicking responses evoked when that stimulus is presented alone. In some neurons, driving strategy creates selective response additivities. In others, it creates vulnerabilities to the disruptive effects of independently moving objects. Such cue interactions may be related to the disruptive effects of independently moving objects in Alzheimer's disease patients with navigational deficits.

| S-EPMC3236797 | biostudies-literature

Boosting cortical activity at Beta-band frequencies slows movement in humans.

Project description:Neurons have a striking tendency to engage in oscillatory activities. One important type of oscillatory activity prevalent in the motor system occurs in the beta frequency band, at about 20 Hz. It is manifest during the maintenance of tonic contractions and is suppressed prior to and during voluntary movement. This and other correlative evidence suggests that beta activity might promote tonic contraction, while impairing motor processing related to new movements. Hence, bursts of beta activity in the cortex are associated with a strengthening of the motor effects of sensory feedback during tonic contraction and with reductions in the velocity of voluntary movements. Moreover, beta activity is increased when movement has to be resisted or voluntarily suppressed. Here we use imperceptible transcranial alternating-current stimulation to entrain cortical activity at 20 Hz in healthy subjects and show that this slows voluntary movement. The present findings are the first direct evidence of causality between any physiological oscillatory brain activity and concurrent motor behavior in the healthy human and help explain how the exaggerated beta activity found in Parkinson's disease can lead to motor slowing in this illness.

| S-EPMC2791174 | biostudies-literature

Mechanisms underlying cortical activity during value-guided choice.

Project description:When choosing between two options, correlates of their value are represented in neural activity throughout the brain. Whether these representations reflect activity that is fundamental to the computational process of value comparison, as opposed to other computations covarying with value, is unknown. We investigated activity in a biophysically plausible network model that transforms inputs relating to value into categorical choices. A set of characteristic time-varying signals emerged that reflect value comparison. We tested these model predictions using magnetoencephalography data recorded from human subjects performing value-guided decisions. Parietal and prefrontal signals matched closely with model predictions. These results provide a mechanistic explanation of neural signals recorded during value-guided choice and a means of distinguishing computational roles of different cortical regions whose activity covaries with value.

| S-EPMC3378494 | biostudies-literature

Movement and Performance Explain Widespread Cortical Activity in a Visual Detection Task.

Project description:Recent studies in mice reveal widespread cortical signals during task performance; however, the various task-related and task-independent processes underlying this activity are incompletely understood. Here, we recorded wide-field neural activity, as revealed by GCaMP6s, from dorsal cortex while simultaneously monitoring orofacial movements, walking, and arousal (pupil diameter) of head-fixed mice performing a Go/NoGo visual detection task and examined the ability of task performance and spontaneous or task-related movements to predict cortical activity. A linear model was able to explain a significant fraction (33-55% of variance) of widefield dorsal cortical activity, with the largest factors being movements (facial, walk, eye), response choice (hit, miss, false alarm), and arousal and indicate that a significant fraction of trial-to-trial variability arises from both spontaneous and task-related changes in state (e.g., movements, arousal). Importantly, secondary motor cortex was highly correlated with lick rate, critical for optimal task performance (high d'), and was the first region to significantly predict the lick response on target trials. These findings suggest that secondary motor cortex is critically involved in the decision and performance of learned movements and indicate that a significant fraction of trial-to-trial variation in cortical activity results from spontaneous and task-related movements and variations in behavioral/arousal state.

| S-EPMC7029483 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

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