PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Camden J. MacDowell
AU  - Timothy J. Buschman
TI  - Low-Dimensional Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Underlie Cortex-Wide Neural Activity
AID  - 10.1101/2020.01.05.895177
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.01.05.895177
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/06/2020.01.05.895177.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/06/2020.01.05.895177.full
AB  - Cognition arises from the dynamic flow of neural activity through the brain. To capture these dynamics, we used mesoscale calcium imaging to record neural activity across the dorsal cortex of awake mice. We found that the large majority of variance in cortex-wide activity (∼75%) could be explained by a limited set of ∼14 ‘motifs’ of neural activity. Each motif captured a unique spatio-temporal pattern of neural activity across the cortex. These motifs generalized across animals and were seen in multiple behavioral environments. Motif expression differed across behavioral states and specific motifs were engaged by sensory processing, suggesting the motifs reflect core cortical computations. Together, our results show that cortex-wide neural activity is highly dynamic, but that these dynamics are restricted to a low-dimensional set of motifs, potentially to allow for efficient control of behavior.