Topic: sensorimotor systems

Animals from flying insects to running humans thrive in uncertain and noisy environments. They smoothly navigate, swiftly track targets and escape predators because their sensorimotor systems are precisely fine-tuned for these tasks. Millisecond-precise spike timing codes, prevalent in both sensory and motor systems, can prompt large changes in muscle forces especially when several muscles coordinate to control a biomechanical action. Such coordinated spike timing changes, modulated by task-relevant sensory encoding over long timescales, can significantly contribute to the effectiveness of mot

The moment that a tasty substance enters an animal’s mouth, the clock starts ticking. Taste information transduced on the tongue signals whether a potential food will nourish or poison, and the animal must therefore use this information quickly if it is to decide whether the food should be swallowed or expelled. The system tasked with computing this important decision is rife with cross-talk and feedback—circuitry that all but ensures dynamics and between-neuron coupling in neural responses to tastes. In fact, cortical taste responses, rather than simply reporting individual taste identities,