Premotor-motor circuits

Birdsong is a complex behavior that exhibits hierarchical organization. While the representation of singing behavior and its hierarchical organization has been studied in some detail in avian cortical premotor circuits, our understanding of the role of the thalamus in adult birdsong is incomplete. Using a combination of behavioral and electrophysiological studies, we seek to expand on earlier work showing that the thalamic nucleus Uvaeformis (Uva) is necessary for the production of stereotyped, adult song in zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata)...

We introduce a flexible method for high-resolution interrogation of circuit function, which combines simultaneous 3D two-photon stimulation of multiple targeted neurons, volumetric functional imaging, and quantitative behavioral tracking. This integrated approach was applied to dissect how an ensemble of premotor neurons in the larval zebrafish brain drives a basic motor program, the bending of the tail. We developed an iterative photostimulation strategy to identify minimal subsets of channelrhodopsin (ChR2)-expressing neurons that are sufficient to initiate tail movements...

Prehension movements typically include a reaching phase, guiding the hand toward the object, and a grip phase, shaping the hand around it. The dominant view posits that these components rely upon largely independent parieto-frontal circuits: a dorso-medial circuit involved in reaching and a dorso-lateral circuit involved in grasping. However, mounting evidence suggests a more complex arrangement, with dorso-medial areas contributing to both reaching and grasping. To investigate the role of the dorso-medial reaching circuit in grasping, we trained monkeys to reach-and-grasp different objects in the dark and determined if hand configurations could be decoded from functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) responses obtained from the reaching and grasping circuits...

Neurons communicate through chemical synapses and electrical synapses (gap junctions). Although these two types of synapses often coexist between neurons, little is known about whether they interact, and whether any interactions between them are important to controlling synaptic strength and circuit functions. By studying chemical and electrical synapses between premotor interneurons (AVA) and downstream motor neurons (A-MNs) in the Caenorhabditis elegans escape circuit, we found that disrupting either the chemical or electrical synapses causes defective escape response...

A number of studies suggest that Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with alterations of neuronal activity patterns in the basal-ganglia-thalamocortical circuit. There are limited electrophysiological data, however, describing how the premotor cortex, which is involved in movement and decision-making, is likely impacted in PD. In this study, spontaneous local field potential (LFP) and single unit neuronal activity were recorded in the dorsal premotor area of nonhuman primates in both the naïve and parkinsonian state using the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) model of parkinsonism...

Premotor circuits driving extraocular motoneurons and downstream motor outputs of cerebellar nuclei are well known. However, there is, as yet, no unequivocal account of cerebellar output pathways controlling eye movements in primates. Using retrograde transneuronal transfer of rabies virus from the lateral rectus (LR) eye muscle, we studied polysynaptic pathways to LR motoneurons in primates. Injections were placed either into the central or distal muscle portion, to identify innervation differences of LR motoneurons supplying singly innervated (SIFs) or multiply innervated muscle fibers (MIFs)...

Central patterns generators (CPGs) are neural circuits that drive rhythmic motor output without sensory feedback. Vertebrate CPGs are generally believed to operate in a top-down manner in which premotor interneurons activate motor neurons that in turn drive muscles. In contrast, the frog (Xenopus laevis) vocal CPG contains a functionally unexplored neuronal projection from the motor nucleus to the premotor nucleus, indicating a recurrent pathway that may contribute to rhythm generation. In this study, we characterized the function of this bottom-up connection...

Dorsal premotor (PMd) and primary motor (M1) cortices play a central role in mapping sensation to movement. Many studies of these areas have focused on correlation-based tuning curves relating neural activity to task or movement parameters, but the link between tuning and movement generation is unclear. We recorded motor preparatory activity from populations of neurons in PMd/M1 as macaque monkeys performed a visually guided reaching task and show that tuning curves for sensory inputs (reach target direction) and motor outputs (initial movement direction) are not typically aligned...

Comparing synaptic circuits and networks between brains of different animal groups helps us derive an understanding of how nervous systems might have evolved. The circuits of the startle response pathway in the brains of tailed vertebrates are known from electrophysiological studies on the giant reticulospinal Mauthner cells (M-cells). To identify morphological counterparts in chordate tunicates, a sister group of vertebrates [1, 2], we have compiled a densely reconstructed connectome (defined in [3]) for the CNS in the tadpole larva of Ciona intestinalis (L...

Spasms after spinal cord injury (SCI) are debilitating involuntary muscle contractions that have been associated with increased motor neuron excitability and decreased inhibition. However, whether spasms involve activation of premotor spinal excitatory neuronal circuits is unknown. Here we use mouse genetics, electrophysiology, imaging and optogenetics to directly target major classes of spinal interneurons as well as motor neurons during spasms in a mouse model of chronic SCI. We find that assemblies of excitatory spinal interneurons are recruited by sensory input into functional circuits to generate persistent neural activity, which interacts with both the graded expression of plateau potentials in motor neurons to generate spasms, and inhibitory interneurons to curtail them...

Variable motor sequences of animals are often structured and can be described by probabilistic transition rules between action elements. Examples include the songs of many songbird species such as the Bengalese finch, which consist of stereotypical syllables sequenced according to probabilistic rules (song syntax). The neural mechanisms behind such rules are poorly understood. Here we investigate where the song syntax is encoded in the brain of the Bengalese finch by rapidly and reversibly manipulating the temperature in the song production pathway...

In primates, neural mechanisms for controlling skilled hand actions primarily rely on sensorimotor transformations. These transformations are mediated by circuits linking specific inferior parietal with ventral premotor areas in which sensory coding of objects' features automatically triggers appropriate hand motor programs. Recently, connectional studies in macaques showed that these parietal and premotor areas are nodes of a large-scale cortical network, designated as "lateral grasping network," including specific temporal and prefrontal sectors involved in object recognition and executive functions, respectively...

Imitation learning involves the acquisition of novel motor patterns based on action observation (AO). We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the imitation learning of spatial sequences and rhythms during AO, motor imagery (MI), and imitative execution in nonmusicians and musicians. While both tasks engaged the fronto-parietal mirror circuit, the spatial sequence task recruited posterior parietal and dorsal premotor regions more strongly. The rhythm task involved an additional network for auditory working memory...

Hypothalamic neuropeptide Y (NPY) elicits hunger responses to increase the chances of surviving starvation: an inhibition of metabolism and an increase in feeding. Here we elucidate a key central circuit mechanism through which hypothalamic NPY signals drive these hunger responses. GABAergic neurons in the intermediate and parvicellular reticular nuclei (IRt/PCRt) of the medulla oblongata, which are activated by NPY-triggered neural signaling from the hypothalamus, potentially through the nucleus tractus solitarius, mediate the NPY-induced inhibition of metabolic thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue (BAT) via their innervation of BAT sympathetic premotor neurons...

Cortico-cortical connectivity has become a major focus of neuroscience in the last decade but most of the connectivity studies focused on intrahemispheric circuits. Little has been reported about information acquired and processed in the premotor cortex and its functional connection with its homotopic counterpart in the opposite hemisphere via the corpus callosum. In non-human primates (macaques) lateralization is not well documented and its exact role is still unknown. The present study confirms in two macaques the existence of homotopic contralateral projections and completes the picture by further exploring heterotopic (non-motor) callosal projections...

BACKGROUND: Huntington's disease (HD) causes progressive atrophy to the striatum, a critical node in frontostriatal circuitry. Maintenance of motor function is dependent on functional connectivity of these premotor, motor, and dorsolateral frontostriatal circuits, and structural integrity of the striatum itself. We aimed to investigate whether size and shape of the striatum as a measure of frontostriatal circuit structural integrity was correlated with functional frontostriatal electrophysiological neural premotor processing (contingent negative variation, CNV), to better understand motoric structure-function relationships in early HD...

SEE SCHENCK AND MAHOWALD DOI101093/AWW329 FOR A SCIENTIFIC COMMENTARY ON THIS ARTICLE: Idiopathic REM sleep behaviour disorder is characterized by the enactment of violent dreams during paradoxical (REM) sleep in the absence of normal muscle atonia. Accumulating clinical and experimental data suggest that REM sleep behaviour disorder might be due to the neurodegeneration of glutamate neurons involved in paradoxical sleep and located within the pontine sublaterodorsal tegmental nucleus. The purpose of the present work was thus to functionally determine first, the role of glutamate sublaterodorsal tegmental nucleus neurons in paradoxical sleep and second, whether their genetic inactivation is sufficient for recapitulating REM sleep behaviour disorder in rats...

BACKGROUND: Complex motor stereotypies in children are repetitive rhythmic movements that have a predictable pattern and location, seem purposeful, but serve no obvious function, tend to be prolonged, and stop with distraction, e.g., arm or hand flapping, waving. They occur in both "primary" (otherwise typically developing) and secondary conditions. These movements are best defined as habitual behaviors and therefore pathophysiologically hypothesized to reside in premotor to posterior putamen circuits...

The relative simplicity of the neural circuits that mediate vestibular reflexes is well suited for linking systems and cellular levels of analyses. Notably, a distinctive feature of the vestibular system is that neurons at the first central stage of sensory processing in the vestibular nuclei are premotor neurons; the same neurons that receive vestibular-nerve input also send direct projections to motor pathways. For example, the simplicity of the three-neuron pathway that mediates the vestibulo-ocular reflex leads to the generation of compensatory eye movements within ~5ms of a head movement...

Animals integrate the different senses to facilitate event-detection for navigation in their environment. In vertebrates, the optic tectum (superior colliculus) commands gaze shifts by synaptic integration of different sensory modalities. Recent works suggest that tectum can elaborate gaze reorientation commands on its own, rather than merely acting as a relay from upstream/forebrain circuits to downstream premotor centers. We show that tectal circuits can perform multisensory computations independently and, hence, configure final motor commands...