Efficient cortical coding of 3D posture in freely behaving rats

Animals constantly update their body posture to meet behavioral demands, but little is known about the neural signals on which this depends. We therefore tracked freely foraging rats in three dimensions while recording from the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and the frontal motor cortex (M2), areas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2018-11, Vol.362 (6414), p.584-589
Main Authors: Mimica, Bartul, Dunn, Benjamin A, Tombaz, Tuce, Bojja, V P T N C Srikanth, Whitlock, Jonathan R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animals
Arm
Back
Behavior, Animal
Brain
Coding
Cortex (frontal)
Cortex (motor)
Cortex (parietal)
Decoding
Head
Imaging, Three-Dimensional
Models, Animal
Motor Cortex - physiology
Motor task performance
Motors
Movement - physiology
Navigation behavior
Neck
Neural coding
Neurons
Neurons - physiology
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Posture
Posture - physiology
Primates
Rats
Recording
Representations
Rodents
Tracking
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Summary:Animals constantly update their body posture to meet behavioral demands, but little is known about the neural signals on which this depends. We therefore tracked freely foraging rats in three dimensions while recording from the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and the frontal motor cortex (M2), areas critical for movement planning and navigation. Both regions showed strong tuning to posture of the head, neck, and back, but signals for movement were much less dominant. Head and back representations were organized topographically across the PPC and M2, and more neurons represented postures that occurred less often. Simultaneous recordings across areas were sufficiently robust to decode ongoing behavior and showed that spiking in the PPC tended to precede that in M2. Both the PPC and M2 strongly represent posture by using a spatially organized, energetically efficient population code.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aau2013