Banerjee Arkarup, Chen Feng, Druckmann Shaul, Long Michael A
NYU Neuroscience Institute, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Department of Otolaryngology, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY 10016, USA.
bioRxiv. 2023 Jan 23:2023.01.23.525252. doi: 10.1101/2023.01.23.525252.
Neocortical activity is thought to mediate voluntary control over vocal production, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. In a highly vocal rodent, the Alston's singing mouse, we investigate neural dynamics in the orofacial motor cortex (OMC), a structure critical for vocal behavior. We first describe neural activity that is modulated by component notes (approx. 100 ms), likely representing sensory feedback. At longer timescales, however, OMC neurons exhibit diverse and often persistent premotor firing patterns that stretch or compress with song duration (approx. 10 s). Using computational modeling, we demonstrate that such temporal scaling, acting via downstream motor production circuits, can enable vocal flexibility. These results provide a framework for studying hierarchical control circuits, a common design principle across many natural and artificial systems.
新皮层活动被认为介导对发声的自主控制，但其潜在的神经机制仍不清楚。在一种高度发声的啮齿动物——奥尔斯顿氏歌鼠中，我们研究了口面部运动皮层（OMC）中的神经动力学，该结构对发声行为至关重要。我们首先描述了由音符成分（约100毫秒）调制的神经活动，这可能代表感觉反馈。然而，在更长的时间尺度上，OMC神经元表现出多样且通常持续的运动前放电模式，这些模式会随着歌声持续时间（约10秒）而伸展或压缩。通过计算建模，我们证明这种时间尺度缩放通过下游运动产生回路起作用，可以实现发声灵活性。这些结果为研究分层控制回路提供了一个框架，这是许多自然和人工系统中的一个共同设计原则。
