Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Neuron. 2021 Sep 15;109(18):2981-2994.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.08.017.
The role of the cerebellum in predictive motor control and coordination has been thoroughly studied during movements of a single body part. In the real world, however, actions are often more complex. Here, we show that a small area in the rostral anterior interpositus nucleus (rAIN) of the mouse cerebellum is responsible for generating a predictive motor synergy that serves to protect the eye by precisely coordinating muscles of the eyelid, neck, and forelimb. Within the rAIN region, we discovered a new functional category of neurons with unique properties specialized for control of motor synergies. These neurons integrated inhibitory cutaneous inputs from multiple parts of the body, and their activity was correlated with the vigor of the defensive motor synergy on a trial-by-trial basis. We propose that some regions of the cerebellum are organized in poly-somatotopic "action maps" to reduce dimensionality and simplify motor control during ethologically relevant behaviors.
小脑在预测性运动控制和协调中的作用在单一身体部位的运动中得到了深入研究。然而，在现实世界中，动作往往更加复杂。在这里，我们表明，小鼠小脑的前蚓部（AIN）的一小部分区域负责产生一种预测性运动协同作用，通过精确协调眼睑、颈部和前肢的肌肉来保护眼睛。在 rAIN 区域内，我们发现了一种新的具有独特特性的神经元功能类别，专门用于控制运动协同作用。这些神经元整合了来自身体多个部位的抑制性皮肤输入，其活动与防御性运动协同作用的活力在试验基础上相关。我们提出，小脑的某些区域以多体感觉图的形式组织，以在与行为相关的行为中降低维度并简化运动控制。
