Neuron
Volume 94, Issue 4, 17 May 2017, Pages 880-890.e8
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Article
Transformation of Cortex-wide Emergent Properties during Motor Learning

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.04.015Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Longitudinal wide-field calcium imaging of cortex during motor learning

  • Motor learning compressed and stabilized sequential activity across cortex

  • Motor learning altered the information flow across cortex

  • Premotor cortex acquired a leading role with motor learning

Summary

Learning involves a transformation of brain-wide operation dynamics. However, our understanding of learning-related changes in macroscopic dynamics is limited. Here, we monitored cortex-wide activity of the mouse brain using wide-field calcium imaging while the mouse learned a motor task over weeks. Over learning, the sequential activity across cortical modules became temporally more compressed, and its trial-by-trial variability decreased. Moreover, a new flow of activity emerged during learning, originating from premotor cortex (M2), and M2 became predictive of the activity of many other modules. Inactivation experiments showed that M2 is critical for the post-learning dynamics in the cortex-wide activity. Furthermore, two-photon calcium imaging revealed that M2 ensemble activity also showed earlier activity onset and reduced variability with learning, which was accompanied by changes in the activity-movement relationship. These results reveal newly emergent properties of macroscopic cortical dynamics during motor learning and highlight the importance of M2 in controlling learned movements.

Keywords

wide-field calcium imaging
two-photon calcium imaging
motor learning
macroscopic cortical circuit
emergent properties
premotor cortex

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