TY - JOUR
T1 - Disrupting cortico-cerebellar communication impairs dexterity
AU - Guo, Jian Zhong
AU - Sauerbrei, Britton A.
AU - Cohen, Jeremy D.
AU - Mischiati, Matteo
AU - Graves, Austin R.
AU - Pisanello, Ferruccio
AU - Branson, Kristin M.
AU - Hantman, Adam W.
N1 - Funding Information:
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Adam W Hantman.
Publisher Copyright:
© Guo et al.
PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - To control reaching, the nervous system must generate large changes in muscle activation to drive the limb toward the target, and must also make smaller adjustments for precise and accurate behavior. Motor cortex controls the arm through projections to diverse targets across the central nervous system, but it has been challenging to identify the roles of cortical projections to specific targets. Here, we selectively disrupt cortico-cerebellar communication in the mouse by optogenetically stimulating the pontine nuclei in a cued reaching task. This perturbation did not typically block movement initiation, but degraded the precision, accuracy, duration, or success rate of the movement. Correspondingly, cerebellar and cortical activity during movement were largely preserved, but differences in hand velocity between control and stimulation conditions predicted from neural activity were correlated with observed velocity differences. These results suggest that while the total output of motor cortex drives reaching, the cortico-cerebellar loop makes small adjustments that contribute to the successful execution of this dexterous movement.
AB - To control reaching, the nervous system must generate large changes in muscle activation to drive the limb toward the target, and must also make smaller adjustments for precise and accurate behavior. Motor cortex controls the arm through projections to diverse targets across the central nervous system, but it has been challenging to identify the roles of cortical projections to specific targets. Here, we selectively disrupt cortico-cerebellar communication in the mouse by optogenetically stimulating the pontine nuclei in a cued reaching task. This perturbation did not typically block movement initiation, but degraded the precision, accuracy, duration, or success rate of the movement. Correspondingly, cerebellar and cortical activity during movement were largely preserved, but differences in hand velocity between control and stimulation conditions predicted from neural activity were correlated with observed velocity differences. These results suggest that while the total output of motor cortex drives reaching, the cortico-cerebellar loop makes small adjustments that contribute to the successful execution of this dexterous movement.
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U2 - 10.7554/eLife.65906
DO - 10.7554/eLife.65906
M3 - Article
C2 - 34324417
AN - SCOPUS:85111423179
SN - 2050-084X
VL - 10
JO - eLife
JF - eLife
M1 - e65906
ER -