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Animals acquire behaviors through instrumental conditioning. Brain-machine interfaces have used instrumental conditioning to reinforce patterns of neural activity directly, especially in frontal and motor cortices, which are a rich source of signals for voluntary action. However, evidence suggests that activity in primary sensory cortices may also reflect internally driven processes, instead of purely...
Activity in striatal direct- and indirect-pathway spiny projection neurons (SPNs) is critical for proper movement. However, little is known about the spatiotemporal organization of this activity. We investigated the spatiotemporal organization of SPN ensemble activity in mice during self-paced, natural movements using microendoscopic imaging. Activity in both pathways showed predominantly local but...
During motor learning, movements and underlying neural activity initially exhibit large trial-to-trial variability that decreases over learning. However, it is unclear how task-relevant neural populations coordinate to explore and consolidate activity patterns. Exploration and consolidation could happen for each neuron independently, across the population jointly, or both. We disambiguated among these...
Everyday function demands efficient and flexible decision-making that allows for habitual and goal-directed action control. An inability to shift has been implicated in disorders with impaired decision-making, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction. Despite this, our understanding of the specific molecular mechanisms and circuitry involved in shifting action control remains limited...
Motor behaviors recruit task-specific neuronal ensembles in motor cortices, which are consolidated over subsequent learning. However, little is known about the molecules that can identify the participating neurons and predict the outcomes of the consolidation process. Using a mouse rotarod-learning task, we showed that lesion or inactivation of the secondary motor (M2) cortex disrupts learning of...
Confidence judgments are a central example of metacognition—knowledge about one’s own cognitive processes. According to this metacognitive view, confidence reports are generated by a second-order monitoring process based on the quality of internal representations about beliefs. Although neural correlates of decision confidence have been recently identified in humans and other animals, it is not well...
In a recent study in the journal Cell, Tervo et al. (2014) show that animals can implement stochastic choice policies in environments unfavorable to predictive strategies. The shift toward stochastic behavior was driven by noradrenergic signaling in the anterior cingulate cortex.
It has been postulated that selective temporal coordination between neurons and development of functional neuronal assemblies are fundamental for brain function and behavior. Still, there is little evidence that functionally relevant coordination emerges preferentially in neuronal assemblies directly controlling behavioral output. We investigated coherence between primary motor cortex and the dorsal...
The glopus pallidus is a central nucleus of the basal ganglia, pivotal to their function in health and disease. In this issue of Neuron, Mallet et al. (2012) reveal that this structure is more diverse than previously thought, and identify a novel cell type that projects from pallidum to striatum providing massive GABAergic innervation. These findings invite new views on basal ganglia processing.
High-frequency open-loop deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been used to alleviate Parkinson's symptoms for almost 20 years. In this issue of Neuron, Rosin et al. present a closed-loop real-time approach that improves DBS and shines light on the etiology of motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease.
Dopaminergic dysregulation can cause motor dysfunction, but the mechanisms underlying dopamine-related motor disorders remain under debate. We used an inducible and reversible pharmacogenetic approach in dopamine transporter knockout mice to investigate the simultaneous activity of neuronal ensembles in the dorsolateral striatum and primary motor cortex during hyperdopaminergia (∼500% of controls)...
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