Summary: A fresh research challenges the long-held conviction that the brain is responsible for selecting activities. Researchers discovered that the brain and machine brain collaborate to identify activity details, such as how to reach for an item, rather than making decisions.
Using a book “reach-to-pull” program, they recorded neuronal activity in animals and found that both locations were active during activity murder, no decision-making. These findings may alter how we perceive motor control and increase the care of movement problems like Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.
Major Information
- Striatum’s Role Reimagined: The brain fine-tunes activity guidelines more than selecting activities.
- Motor Cortex Collaboration: Both the hippocampus and engine cortex function together to designate movement execution.
- Implications for Movement Disorders: Understanding the striatum’s real position could lead to better solutions for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.
Origin: HHMI
Your mind needs to choose what to do and how to do it when you are weighing two options for behavior.
Your mind may choose whether you want to read the book or drink coffee, for instance, choosing the course of action that needs to be taken. Your mind needs to know whether the action is required to be 20 degrees single way for the text or 20 degrees the other method for the glass.
For generations, most researchers thought that one area of the brain, the basal ganglia, was responsible for actions choice and another place, the motor cortex, for behavior standards.
Researchers led by the Dudman Lab discovered that a portion of the basal ganglia called the brain is not involved in action collection as formerly thought using a novel method developed at Janelia.
Otherwise, the machine brain and the striatum communicate to set the movement parameters necessary for the action.
The , fresh work , buildings light on the part of brain in engine power, information that could help researchers better understand activity problems, like Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.
” Now we can begin thinking: how is the brain controlling the frequency of activity, how do we bring that up online, how do we increase that”, says Janelia Senior Group Leader Josh Dudman.
In the end, having a more accurate, conceptual model of how the striatum functions will help us think more critically about how to restore function.
Design, build, test
Dudman and his team began the project ten years ago when they began to examine striatal data that challenged previously established theories regarding the function of the brain region.
Their data was in line with other striatum observations that had questioned its traditional function. For instance, the region is connected to the motor system, which suggests that it might be involved in more mechanical facets of behavior.
Further, patients with movement disorders that affect the basal ganglia, like Parkinson’s or Huntington’s, don’t have trouble deciding what they want to do, but they have trouble moving their limbs to do it.
The team intended to test their hypothesis by examining whether the striatum is involved in the more mechanical components of a flexible, goal-directed action.
The researchers conducted an experiment in which the movements are essentially the same, with the only slight difference being the movement when picking up a book from the cup to the other possibilities.
In this situation, the neural activity patterns would be similar for selection but different for specification. The researchers could tell the difference between the two actions by doing this.
The researchers worked with , Janelia Experimental Technology , to design a novel “reach-to-pull” system where a joystick can be in one of two slightly different positions that require nearly similar movements to access.
As a mouse reaches for and then pulls a joystick to get a water reward, the researchers simultaneously recorded neural activity in both its striatum and its motor cortex. When the animal reached and pulled the joystick at various locations, both brain regions ‘ neural activity was the same.
These findings support the idea that the striatum and motor cortex are involved in specification rather than selection, and that they collaborate to give the animal the freedom to decide how to carry out the action.
The team’s work raises questions about how these two brain regions work together to achieve the same goal. It appears that each region’s contribution to subtle variations is more subtle than the other, which could lead to” too many cooks in the kitchen” being performed by multiple brain regions.
The recent findings suggest that behavior is a result of many different agents working together rather than one single agent.
The research also includes a novel method for testing hypotheses about the role of various brain regions in flexible, goal-direction action, a project that the researchers claim Janelia helped to facilitate.  ,
It makes a big difference that we are in a setting where we can express our desire to create a brand-new piece of experimental hardware to carry out an experiment that we created, Dudman says.
” We can really try it because it’s not just speeding it up; it’s actually taking it from above the threshold opportunity cost to below the threshold opportunity cost.”
About this news about neuroscience research
Author: Nanci Bompey
Source: HHMI
Contact: Nanci Bompey – HHMI
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
Josh Dudman and al.,” Conjoint description of the striatum and neocortex’s interactions.” Neuron
Abstract
Conjoint description of the striatum and neocortex’s interactions
The interplay between two major forebrain structures—cortex and subcortical striatum—is critical for flexible, goal-directed action.
Tradition has suggested that the primary motor cortex is responsible for determining the continuous parameters of an upcoming or ongoing movement while the striatum is crucial for deciding what type of action is initiated.
Recent data indicate that striatum may also be involved in specification. These alternatives have been challenging to reconcile because very different actions are often compared, leading to essentially indistinguishable comparisons.
We create quantitative models to reveal a somewhat paradoxical finding: only comparing neural activity to comparable actions produces strong predictions. We thus created a novel reach-to-pull task that mice could use to reliably choose between two pull forces and similar but distinct reach targets.
Simultaneous cortical and subcortical recordings had unmatched consistency with a model where the cortex and the striatum jointly define continuous parameters governing movement execution.
