Tuning Curves for Arm Posture Control in Motor Cortex Are Consistent with Random Connectivity

6Citations
Citations of this article
95Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

Abstract

Neuronal responses characterized by regular tuning curves are typically assumed to arise from structured synaptic connectivity. However, many responses exhibit both regular and irregular components. To address the relationship between tuning curve properties and underlying circuitry, we analyzed neuronal activity recorded from primary motor cortex (M1) of monkeys performing a 3D arm posture control task and compared the results with a neural network model. Posture control is well suited for examining M1 neuronal tuning because it avoids the dynamic complexity of time-varying movements. As a function of hand position, the neuronal responses have a linear component, as has previously been described, as well as heterogeneous and highly irregular nonlinearities. These nonlinear components involve high spatial frequencies and therefore do not support explicit encoding of movement parameters. Yet both the linear and nonlinear components contribute to the decoding of EMG of major muscles used in the task. Remarkably, despite the presence of a strong linear component, a feedforward neural network model with entirely random connectivity can replicate the data, including both the mean and distributions of the linear and nonlinear components as well as several other features of the neuronal responses. This result shows that smoothness provided by the regularity in the inputs to M1 can impose apparent structure on neural responses, in this case a strong linear (also known as cosine) tuning component, even in the absence of ordered synaptic connectivity.

References Powered by Scopus

Regression Shrinkage and Selection Via the Lasso

35674Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Multimodal representation of space in the posterior parietal cortex and its use in planning movements

1165Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Encoding of spatial location by posterior parietal neurons

1020Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Cited by Powered by Scopus

Randomly weighted receptor inputs can explain the large diversity of colour-coding neurons in the bee visual system

6Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Concept embedding through canonical forms: A case study on zero-shot ASL recognition

2Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Renormalization of Collective Modes in Large-Scale Neural Dynamics

2Citations
N/AReaders
Get full text

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Lalazar, H., Abbott, L. F., & Vaadia, E. (2016). Tuning Curves for Arm Posture Control in Motor Cortex Are Consistent with Random Connectivity. PLoS Computational Biology, 12(5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004910

Readers' Seniority

Tooltip

PhD / Post grad / Masters / Doc 46

67%

Researcher 14

20%

Professor / Associate Prof. 9

13%

Readers' Discipline

Tooltip

Neuroscience 28

47%

Agricultural and Biological Sciences 15

25%

Computer Science 8

14%

Engineering 8

14%

Article Metrics

Tooltip
Social Media
Shares, Likes & Comments: 129

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free