Topic: neural trajectories

We recorded and analyzed the population activity of hundreds of neurons in the medial premotor areas (MPC) of rhesus monkeys performing an isochronous tapping task guided by brief flashing stimuli or auditory tones. The animals showed a strong bias towards visual metronomes, with rhythmic tapping that was more precise and accurate than for auditory metronomes. The population dynamics in state space as well as the corresponding neural sequences shared the following properties across modalities: the circular dynamics of the neural trajectories and the neural sequences formed a regenerating loop

Motor adaptation is a widely-used paradigm for understanding short-term learning. However, it is unknown how existing skillsets acquired through the long-term learning process that begins in utero can affect motor adaptation. Long-term learning likely causes changes in neural connectivity, which may shape the neural dynamics that can be produced. To understand the interaction between circuit connectivity constraints and a neural population’s ability to change its activity patterns, we modeled the neural dynamics of the motor cortex during skill learning and subsequent adaptation using a recurr

The description of neural computations currently relies on two competing views: (i) a classical single-cell view that aims to relate the activity of individual neurons to sensory or behavioural variables, and organize them into functional classes; (ii) a more recent population view that instead characterises computations in terms of collective neural trajectories, and focuses on the dimensionality of these trajectories as animals perform tasks. How the two key concepts of functional cell classes and low-dimensional trajectories interact to shape neural computations is however at present not un

How does the brain process and integrate information from different sensory modalities? This intriguing question has been explored in this study by recording the activity of the Ventral Premotor Cortex (VPC) in two trained macaques (Macaca mulatta) while performing a Bimodal Detection Task (BDT) previously used by Parra et al., 2022. In BDT, subjects were required to identify and report the modality, or the absence thereof, of a near-threshold stimulus that could be either tactile or acoustic. An initial approach on single cells revealed the presence of neurons that were responsive to tactile

In the brain, the collective activity of neurons form trajectories on low dimensional neural manifolds. The neural computation underlying flexible cognition and behavior relies on dynamic control of these structures. For example, different tasks or behaviors are represented on different subspaces, requiring fast timescale subspace rotation to move from one behavior to the next. For flexibility in a particular behavior, the neural trajectory must be dynamically controllable within that behaviorally determined subspace. Here we propose mechanisms for fast timescale control of the neural subspace