They showed that the motor cortex generated patterns of rhythmic nerve cell impulses. "We just couldn't look at an arm movement and use that to reliably predict what individual neurons in the motor cortex had been doing to produce that movement," said Dr Cunningham.įor the new study, scientists monitored motor cortex activity as participants reached for a target in different ways. However, researchers could not detect a similar direct encoding of components of movement in individual nerve cells of the motor cortex. In this region, orientation, brightness and other characteristics of objects in the visual field are encoded by individual nerve cells. Until now, scientists had based their studies of the motor cortex on decades-old insights into the workings of the visual cortex.
These patterns advance our understanding of the brain's control of movement, which is critical for understanding disorders that affect movement and for creating therapies that can restore movement." He explained: "Populations of neurons in the motor cortex oscillate in beautiful, coordinated ways. One of those involved in the research work was Dr John Cunningham, who carried out his research whilst he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Engineering's Computational and Biological Learning Laboratory. They linked those patterns to different kinds of shoulder muscle movements. In the study, published in the scientific journal 'Nature', researchers identified rhythmic brain cell firing patterns coordinated across populations of neurons in the motor cortex. A team of scientists have shown that the motor cortex's effects on movement can be much more easily understood by looking at groups of motor cortex neurons instead of individual nerve cells.
The recently published work reports how nerve cells in the brain control movement, which may help unlock the secrets of the motor cortex, a critical region that has long resisted scientists' efforts to understand it.įor years, scientists have been trying to establish a one-to-one relationship between a neuron's behaviour and factors such as muscle activity or speed of movement.
Zoubin Ghahramani, Professor of Information Engineering in the Department of Engineering This work is a prime example of engineering principles and methods being used to advance our understanding of the brain.
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