Tyson N. Aflalo and Michael S. A. Graziano
It comes as no surprise that movements in monkeys are accompanied by single neuronal activity in the motor cortex, but it is less clear which motor parameters are most critical. For example, is it spatial, joint-based, or muscle-based? To get at this question, Aflalo and Graziano let monkeys do their own thing, thus removing the potentially confounding contribution of overly constrained movements in highly trained animals. The authors measured spontaneous arm movements in untrained monkeys using a threedimensional tracking system and recorded from individual neurons in motor cortex. As expected from studies in restrained animals, standard tuning properties of motor cortex neurons were present. Neurons were tuned to multiple movement parameters. The total variance in neuronal activity reflected hand speed (1%), hand direction (8%), complex directional tuning (13%), final hand position (22%), and final arm posture (36%). The authors propose that these rankings reflect the importance of each parameter to arm movements.
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Society for Neuroscience
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