RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A stable, long-term cortical signature underlying consistent behavior
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 447441
DO 10.1101/447441
A1 Juan A. Gallego
A1 Matthew G. Perich
A1 Raeed H. Chowdhury
A1 Sara A. Solla
A1 Lee E. Miller
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/11/18/447441.abstract
AB 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.