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Populations of cortical neurons flexibly perform different functions; for the primary motor cortex (M1) this means a rich repertoire of motor behaviors. We investigate the flexibility of M1 movement control by analyzing neural population activity during a variety of skilled wrist and reach-to-grasp tasks. We compare across tasks the neural modes that capture dominant neural covariance patterns during each task. While each task requires different patterns of muscle and single unit activity, we find unexpected similarities at the neural population level: the structure and activity of the neural modes is largely preserved across tasks. Furthermore, we find two sets of neural modes with task-independent activity that capture, respectively, generic temporal features of the set of tasks and a task-independent mapping onto muscle activity. This system of flexibly combined, well-preserved neural modes may underlie the ability of M1 to learn and generate a wide-ranging behavioral repertoire., This work was supported in part by Grant FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF-627384 from the Commission of the European Union (J.A.G.), by Grant F31-NS092356 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke and Grant T32-HD07418 from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (M.G.P.), by Grant DGE-1324585 from the National Science Foundation (S.N.N.), by Grant 22343 from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Santé (C.E.), and by Grant NS053603 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke (S.A.S. and L.E.M.).

Spatial hearing sensitivity in humans is dynamic and task-dependent, but the mechanisms in human auditory cortex that enable dynamic sound location encoding remain unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed how active behavior affects encoding of sound location (azimuth) in primary auditory cortical areas and planum temporale (PT). According to the hierarchical model of auditory processing and cortical functional specialization, PT is implicated in sound location (“where”) processing. Yet, our results show that spatial tuning profiles in primary auditory cortical areas (left primary core and right caudo-medial belt) sharpened during a sound localization (“where”) task compared with a sound identification (“what”) task. In contrast, spatial tuning in PT was sharp but did not vary with task performance. We further applied a population pattern decoder to the measured fMRI activity patterns, which confirmed the task-dependent effects in the left core: sound location estimates from fMRI patterns measured during active sound localization were most accurate. In PT, decoding accuracy was not modulated by task performance. These results indicate that changes of population activity in human primary auditory areas reflect dynamic and task-dependent processing of sound location. As such, our findings suggest that the hierarchical model of auditory processing may need to be revised to include an interaction between primary and functionally specialized areas depending on behavioral requirements.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTAccording to a purely hierarchical view, cortical auditory processing consists of a series of analysis stages from sensory (acoustic) processing in primary auditory cortex to specialized processing in higher-order areas. Posterior-dorsal cortical auditory areas, planum temporale (PT) in humans, are considered to be functionally specialized for spatial processing. However, this model is based mostly on passive listening studies. Our results provide compelling evidence that active behavior (sound localization) sharpens spatial selectivity in primary auditory cortex, whereas spatial tuning in functionally specialized areas (PT) is narrow but task-invariant. These findings suggest that the hierarchical view of cortical functional specialization needs to be extended: our data indicate that active behavior involves feedback projections from higher-order regions to primary auditory cortex.

bioRxiv preprint first posted online Oct. 18, 2018., Animals readily execute learned motor behaviors in a consistent manner over long periods of time, yet similarly stable neural correlates remained elusive up to now. How does the cortex achieve this stable control? Using the sensorimotor system as a model of cortical processing, we investigated the hypothesis that the dynamics of neural latent activity, which capture the dominant co-variation patterns within the neural population, are preserved across time. We recorded from populations of neurons in premotor, primary motor, and somatosensory cortices for up to two years as monkeys performed a reaching task. Intriguingly, despite steady turnover in the recorded neurons, the low-dimensional latent dynamics remained stable. Such stability allowed reliable decoding of behavioral features for the entire timespan, while fixed decoders based on the recorded neural activity degraded substantially. We posit that latent cortical dynamics within the manifold are the fundamental and stable building blocks underlying consistent behavioral execution.[ES], This work was supported in part by “Talent Attraction” Grant 2017-T2/TIC-5263 from the Community of Madrid (J.A.G.), by a grant from the Whitaker International Scholars Program (M.G.P.), and by Grant NS053603 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke (S.A.S. and L.E.M.).

Nowadays, it is possible to record the activity of hundreds of cells at the same time in behaving animals. However, these data are often treated and analyzed as if they consisted of many independently recorded neurons. How can neuronal populations be uniquely used to learn about cognition? We describe recent work that shows that populations of simultaneously recorded neurons are fundamental to understand the basis of decision-making, including processes such as ongoing deliberations and decision confidence, which generally fall outside the reach of single-cell analysis. Thus, neuronal population data allow addressing novel questions, but they also come with so far unsolved challenges., 21 pages, 4 figures

Entendre l'origen i la funció de l'activitat de poblacions neuronals, i com aquesta activitat es relaciona amb els estímuls sensorials, les decisions o les accions motores és un gran repte per les neurociències. En aquest treball hem analitzat l'activitat de desenes de neurones enregistrades a l'escorça visual primària de micos mentre se'ls presentaven escletxes sinusoïdals en diferents orientacions. Hem trobat que les fluctuacions globals de la xarxa mesurades mitjançant l'activitat de la població modulen la selectivitat de les neurones de forma multiplicativa i additiva. A més, l'activitat de la població també afecta la informació present en grups petits de neurones, depenent de la modulació que ha provocat a la selectivitat d'aquestes. La informació de la població sencera, però, no canvia amb aquestes fluctuacions. A la segona part hem desenvolupat un mètode per mesurar 'correlacions diferencials' amb dades limitades. En aplicar-ho a les dades experimentals hem aconseguit la primera estimació preliminar de la grandària d'aquestes correlacions que limiten la informació. Els nostres resultats contribueixen a l'avenç en la comprensió de la codi ficació d'informació en poblacions neuronals, i alhora generen noves preguntes sobre com aquestes processen i transmeten informació., Entender el origen y la función de la actividad de poblaciones neuronales, y cómo esta actividad se relaciona con los estímulos sensoriales, las decisiones o las acciones motoras es un gran desafio en neurociencia. En este trabajo hemos analizado la actividad de decenas de neuronas registradas en la corteza visual primaria de monos mientras rejillas sinusoidales en diferentes orientaciones eran presentadas. Hemos encontrado que las fluctuaciones globales de la red medidas mediante la actividad de la población modulan la selectividad de las neuronas de manera multiplicativa y aditiva. Además, la actividad de la población también afecta a la información presente en grupos pequeños de neuronas, dependiendo de la modulación que ha provocado en la selectividad de estas neuronas. La información en la población completa, sin embargo, no varía con estas fluctuaciones. En la segunda parte hemos desarrollado un método para medir 'correlaciones diferenciales' con datos limitados. Al aplicarlo a los datos experimentales hemos obtenido la primera estimación preliminar del tamaño de estas correlaciones que limitan la información. Nuestros resultados contribuyen al avance del entendimiento sobre la codi ficación de la información en poblaciones neuronales, y al mismo tiempo generan más preguntas sobre cómo éstas procesan y transmiten información., Understanding the sources and the role of the spiking activity of neural populations, and how this activity is related to sensory stimuli, decisions or motor actions is a crucial challenge in neuroscience. In this work, we analyzed the spiking activity of tens of neurons recorded in the primary visual cortex of macaque monkeys while drifting sinusoidal gratings were presented in di erent orientations. We found that global uctuations of the network measured by the population activity a ect the tuning of individual neurons both multiplicatively and additively. Population activity also has an impact in the information of small ensembles, which depends on the kind of modulation that the tuning of those neurons undergoes. Interestingly, the total information of the network is not altered by these uctuations. In the second part, we developed a method to measure 'di erential correlations' from limited amount of data, and obtained the rst, although preliminary, estimate in experimental data. Our results have important implications for information coding, and they open new questions about the way information is processed and transmitted by the spiking activity of neural populations.

This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed, Long-term learning of language, mathematics, and motor skills likely requires plastic changes in the cortex, but behavior often requires faster changes, sometimes based even on single errors. Here, we show evidence of one mechanism by which the brain can rapidly develop new motor output, seemingly without altering the functional connectivity between or within cortical areas. We recorded simultaneously from hundreds of neurons in the premotor (PMd) and primary motor (M1) cortices, and computed models relating these neural populations throughout adaptation to reaching movement perturbations. We found a signature of learning in the ″null subspace″ of PMd with respect to M1. Earlier experiments have shown that null subspace activity allows the motor cortex to alter preparatory activity without directly influencing M1. In our experiments, the null subspace planning activity evolved with the adaptation, yet the ″potent mapping″ that captures information sent to M1 was preserved. Our results illustrate a population-level mechanism within the motor cortices to adjust the output from one brain area to its downstream structures that could be exploited throughout the brain for rapid, on-line behavioral adaptation. [ENG], The authors would like to thank Dr. Sara Solla for her helpful discussions in preparing these analyses. M.G.P. received funding from NIH NINDST32 HD07418 and NIH NINDSF31 NS092356. J.A.G. received funding from the European Commission (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF-627384). This project was additionally funded by NIH NINDSNS053603 and NIH NINDSNS074044.

Numerous studies have shown that neuronal responses are modulated by stimulus properties, and also by the state of the local network. However, little is known about how activity fluctuations of neuronal populations modulate the sensory tuning of cells and affect their encoded information. We found that fluctuations in ongoing and stimulus-evoked population activity in primate visual cortex modulate the tuning of neurons in a multiplicative and additive manner. While distributed on a continuum, neurons with stronger multiplicative effects tended to have less additive modulation, and vice versa. The information encoded by multiplicatively-modulated neurons increased with greater population activity, while that of additively-modulated neurons decreased. These effects offset each other, so that population activity had little effect on total information. Our results thus suggest that intrinsic activity fluctuations may act as a "traffic light" that determines which subset of neurons are most informative., Comment: Main text: 34 pages, 7 figures. Supplementary information: 13 pages, 7 figures

Transient propagation of information across neuronal assembles is thought to underlie many cognitive processes. However, the nature of the neural code that is embedded within these transmissions remains uncertain. Much of our understanding of how information is transmitted among these assemblies has been derived from computational models. While these models have been instrumental in understanding these processes they often make simplifying assumptions about the biophysical properties of neurons that may influence the nature and properties expressed. To address this issue we created an in vitro analog of a feed-forward network composed of two small populations (also referred to as assemblies or layers) of living dissociated rat cortical neurons. The populations were separated by, and communicated through, a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device containing a strip of microscale tunnels. Delayed culturing of one population in the first layer followed by the second a few days later induced the unidirectional growth of axons through the microtunnels resulting in a primarily feed-forward communication between these two small neural populations. In this study we systematically manipulated the number of tunnels that connected each layer and hence, the number of axons providing communication between those populations. We then assess the effect of reducing the number of tunnels has upon the properties of between-layer communication capacity and fidelity of neural transmission among spike trains transmitted across and within layers. We show evidence based on Victor-Purpura's and van Rossum's spike train similarity metrics supporting the presence of both rate and temporal information embedded within these transmissions whose fidelity increased during communication both between and within layers when the number of tunnels are increased. We also provide evidence reinforcing the role of synchronized activity upon transmission fidelity during the spontaneous synchronized network burst events that propagated between layers and highlight the potential applications of these MEMs devices as a tool for further investigation of structure and functional dynamics among neural populations.

International audience; Cortical activity involves large populations of neurons, even when it is limited to functionally coherent areas. Electrophysiological recordings, on the other hand, involve comparatively small neural ensembles, even when modern-day techniques are used. Here we review results which have started to fill the gap between these two scales of inquiry, by shedding light on the statistical distributions of activity in large populations of cells. We put our main focus on data recorded in awake animals that perform simple decision-making tasks and consider statistical distributions of activity throughout cortex, across sensory, associative, and motor areas. We transversally review the complexity of these distributions, from distributions of firing rates and metrics of spike-train structure, through distributions of tuning to stimuli or actions and of choice signals, and finally the dynamical evolution of neural population activity and the distributions of (pairwise) neural interactions. This approach reveals shared patterns of statistical organization across cortex, including: (i) long-tailed distributions of activity, where quasi-silence seems to be the rule for a majority of neurons; that are barely distinguishable between spontaneous and active states; (ii) distributions of tuning parameters for sensory (and motor) variables, which show an extensive extrapolation and fragmentation of their representations in the periphery; and (iii) population-wide dynamics that reveal rotations of internal representations over time, whose traces can be found both in stimulus-driven and internally generated activity. We discuss how these insights are leading us away from the notion of discrete classes of cells, and are acting as powerful constraints on theories and models of cortical organization and population coding.

Different connectivity configurations were simulated using epileptogenic and non epileptogenic neuronal populations. Connectivity between them was measured using Partial Directed Coherence and Directed Transfer Function. The results were satisfactory and in some cases of clinical utility. The methodology that was used is discussed in comparison with previous works. Fil: Jacobacci, Florencia. Universidad Favaloro. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia "Prof. Eduardo de Robertis". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia; Argentina Fil: Sapir, Martín. Universidad Favaloro. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia "Prof. Eduardo de Robertis". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia; Argentina Fil: Collavini, Santiago. Universidad Favaloro. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia "Prof. Eduardo de Robertis". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia; Argentina Fil: Kochen, Sara Silvia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia "Prof. Eduardo de Robertis". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia; Argentina Fil: Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar. Universidad Favaloro. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia "Prof. Eduardo de Robertis". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia; Argentina