TODAY “Somatosensory cortex is essential for adaptive motor control in mice”.

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• Dr Mackenzie Mathis, Harvard University
• Thursday 26 October 2017, 14:00-15:00
• Hodgkin Huxley Seminar Room, Physiology Building, Downing Site.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Lyn Dakin.

Our motor outputs are constantly re-calibrated to adapt to systematic perturbations. This motor adaptation is thought to depend on the ability to form a memory of a systematic perturbation, often called an internal model. However, the mechanisms underlying the formation, storage, and expression of such models remain unknown. Here, we developed a mouse model to study forelimb adaptation to force field perturbations. We found that temporally precise photoinhibition of somatosensory cortex (S1) applied concurrently with the force field abolished the ability to update subsequent motor commands needed to reduce motor errors. This S1 photoinhibition did not impair basic motor patterns, post-perturbation completion of the action, or their performance in a reward-based learning task. Moreover, S1 photoinhibition after partial adaptation blocked further adaptation, but did not affect the expression of already-adapted motor commands. Thus, S1 is critically involved in updating the memory about the perturbation that is essential for forelimb motor adaptation.

This talk is part of the PDN Talks series.

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• Hodgkin Huxley Seminar Room, Physiology Building, Downing Site
• PDN Talks

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