Janelia Research Campus, HHMI, 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA 20147, United States.
Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030, United States.
Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2018 Apr;49:33-41. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2017.10.023. Epub 2017 Nov 21.
Neurons in motor cortex and connected brain regions fire in anticipation of specific movements, long before movement occurs. This neural activity reflects internal processes by which the brain plans and executes volitional movements. The study of motor planning offers an opportunity to understand how the structure and dynamics of neural circuits support persistent internal states and how these states influence behavior. Recent advances in large-scale neural recordings are beginning to decipher the relationship of the dynamics of populations of neurons during motor planning and movements. New behavioral tasks in rodents, together with quantified perturbations, link dynamics in specific nodes of neural circuits to behavior. These studies reveal a neural network distributed across multiple brain regions that collectively supports motor planning. We review recent advances and highlight areas where further work is needed to achieve a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying motor planning and related cognitive processes.
运动皮层和相关脑区的神经元在运动发生之前就会提前预期特定的运动，这一现象早在运动发生之前就已经存在了。这种神经活动反映了大脑规划和执行自主运动的内部过程。对运动规划的研究为理解神经回路的结构和动态如何支持持久的内部状态，以及这些状态如何影响行为提供了机会。大规模神经记录的最新进展开始揭示在运动规划和运动期间神经元群体动态的关系。啮齿动物的新行为任务，以及量化的干扰，将神经回路特定节点的动态与行为联系起来。这些研究揭示了一个分布在多个脑区的神经网络，共同支持运动规划。我们回顾了最近的进展，并强调了在哪些领域需要进一步的工作，以更深入地了解运动规划和相关认知过程的机制。
