Activity of the same motor cortex neurons during repeated experience with perturbed movement dynamics

Richardson AG, Borghi T, Bizzi E. Activity of the same motor cortex neurons during repeated experience with perturbed movement dynamics. J Neurophysiol 107: 3144-3154, 2012. First published March 28, 2012; doi:10.1152/jn.00477.2011.-Neurons in the primary motor cortex (M1) have been shown to have persistent, memory-like activity following adaptation to altered movement dynamics. However, the techniques used to study these memory traces limited recordings to only single sessions lasting no more than a few hours. Here, chronically implanted microelectrode arrays were used to study the long-term neuronal responses to repeated experience with perturbing, velocity-dependent force fields. Force-field-related neuronal activity within each session was similar to that found previously. That is, the directional tuning curves of the M1 neurons shifted in a manner appropriate to compensate for the forces. Next, the across-session behavior was examined. Long-term learning was evident in the performance improvements across multiple force-field sessions. Correlated with this change, the neuronal population had smaller within-session spike rate changes as experience with the force field increased. The smaller within-session changes were a result of persistent across-session shifts in directional tuning. The results extend the observation of memory traces of newly learned dynamics and provide further evidence for the role of M1 in early motor memory formation.