A motor cortex circuit for motor planning and movement

Nuo Li, Tsai-Wen Chen, Zengcai V. Guo, Charles R. Gerfen and Karel Svoboda ()
Additional contact information
Nuo Li: Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Tsai-Wen Chen: Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Zengcai V. Guo: Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Charles R. Gerfen: Laboratory of Systems Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health
Karel Svoboda: Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Nature, 2015, vol. 519, issue 7541, 51-56

Abstract: Abstract Activity in motor cortex predicts specific movements seconds before they occur, but how this preparatory activity relates to upcoming movements is obscure. We dissected the conversion of preparatory activity to movement within a structured motor cortex circuit. An anterior lateral region of the mouse cortex (a possible homologue of premotor cortex in primates) contains equal proportions of intermingled neurons predicting ipsi- or contralateral movements, yet unilateral inactivation of this cortical region during movement planning disrupts contralateral movements. Using cell-type-specific electrophysiology, cellular imaging and optogenetic perturbation, we show that layer 5 neurons projecting within the cortex have unbiased laterality. Activity with a contralateral population bias arises specifically in layer 5 neurons projecting to the brainstem, and only late during movement planning. These results reveal the transformation of distributed preparatory activity into movement commands within hierarchically organized cortical circuits.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14178 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:519:y:2015:i:7541:d:10.1038_nature14178

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature14178

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().