UC San Diego News Center


Motor Cortex Shown to Play Active Role in Learning Movement Patterns



“Every time you wanted to hear a specific note, there was a specific key to press,” says Andrew Peters, a neurobiologist at UC San Diego’s Center for Neural Circuits and Behavior. “In other words, every specific movement of a muscle required the activation of specific cells in the motor cortex because the main job of the motor cortex was thought to be to listen to the rest of the cortex and press the keys it’s directed to press.”


“Our finding that the relationship between body movements and the activity of the part of the cortex closest to the muscles is profoundly plastic and shaped by learning provides a better picture of this process,” says Takaki Komiyama, an assistant professor of biology at UC San Diego who headed the research team. “That’s important, because elucidating brain plasticity during learning could lead to new avenues for treating learning and movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease.”


“What we saw was that during learning, different patterns of activity—which cells are active, when they're active—were evident in the motor cortex,” says Peters. “This ends up translating to different patterns of activity even for similar movements. Once the animal has learned the movement, similar movements are then accompanied by consistent activity. This consistent activity moreover is totally new to the animal: it wasn't used early in learning even with movements that were similar to the later movement.”

