A neural circuit state change underlying skilled movements.

In motor neuroscience, state changes are hypothesized to time-lock neural assemblies coordinating complex movements, but evidence for this remains slender. We tested whether a discrete change from more autonomous to coherent spiking underlies skilled movement by imaging cerebellar Purkinje neuron complex spikes in mice making targeted forelimb-reaches. As mice learned the task, millimeter-scale spatiotemporally coherent spiking emerged ipsilateral to the reaching forelimb, and consistent neural synchronization became predictive of kinematic stereotypy. Before reach onset, spiking switched from more disordered to internally time-locked concerted spiking and silence. Optogenetic manipulations of cerebellar feedback to the inferior olive bi-directionally modulated neural synchronization and reaching direction. A simple model explained the reorganization of spiking during reaching as reflecting a discrete bifurcation in olivary network dynamics. These findings argue that to prepare learned movements, olivo-cerebellar circuits enter a self-regulated, synchronized state promoting motor coordination. State changes facilitating behavioral transitions may generalize across neural systems.

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Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of interests O.R., M.J.S., J.L., T.H.K., and J.S. are inventors on a patent, assigned to Stanford, for the two-photon mesoscope. K.D. and C.R. have disclosed all novel opsins to Stanford, which has submitted patent applications to facilitate commercial application and translation; all opsin methods, protocols, clones, and sequences are freely available to nonprofit institutions and investigators.