Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Neuroscience, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA.
Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Nat Neurosci. 2019 Oct;22(10):1677-1686. doi: 10.1038/s41593-019-0502-4. Epub 2019 Sep 24.
When experts are immersed in a task, do their brains prioritize task-related activity? Most efforts to understand neural activity during well-learned tasks focus on cognitive computations and task-related movements. We wondered whether task-performing animals explore a broader movement landscape and how this impacts neural activity. We characterized movements using video and other sensors and measured neural activity using widefield and two-photon imaging. Cortex-wide activity was dominated by movements, especially uninstructed movements not required for the task. Some uninstructed movements were aligned to trial events. Accounting for them revealed that neurons with similar trial-averaged activity often reflected utterly different combinations of cognitive and movement variables. Other movements occurred idiosyncratically, accounting for trial-by-trial fluctuations that are often considered 'noise'. This held true throughout task-learning and for extracellular Neuropixels recordings that included subcortical areas. Our observations argue that animals execute expert decisions while performing richly varied, uninstructed movements that profoundly shape neural activity.
当专家专注于某项任务时，他们的大脑是否会优先处理与任务相关的活动？大多数旨在理解熟练任务期间神经活动的努力都集中在认知计算和与任务相关的运动上。我们想知道执行任务的动物是否会探索更广泛的运动范围，以及这如何影响神经活动。我们使用视频和其他传感器来描述运动，并使用宽场和双光子成像来测量神经活动。皮层活动主要由运动主导，尤其是不需要完成任务的非指令运动。一些非指令运动与试验事件对齐。考虑到这些运动，我们发现具有相似试验平均活动的神经元通常反映了完全不同的认知和运动变量组合。其他运动则是独特的，解释了通常被认为是“噪声”的试验间波动。这在整个任务学习中以及包括皮质下区域的细胞外 Neuropixels 记录中都是如此。我们的观察结果表明，动物在执行复杂多变的非指令运动的同时做出专家决策，这些运动深刻地塑造了神经活动。
