A Robust Role for Motor Cortex

Abstract

The function of mammalian motor cortex has remained a persistent mystery. There is a long history of research linking activity in this part of the brain with the control of voluntary movements but surprisingly there is an equally large body of evidence in non-human animals describing all kinds of complex behaviours that are not impaired when motor cortex is fully removed. What is the reason behind this discrepancy? What kind of movements are actually controlled by motor cortex? This thesis attempts to reconcile the many con icting views on the cortical control of movement and outline a strategy for investigating the teleology of this brain region. We start out by introducing a new set of hardware and software tools for neuroscience that aim to make it easier to study in detail more naturalistic motor behaviours in rodents. These tools allow the experimenter to quickly recon gure the physical and virtual environment of a behaviour task while simultaneously tracking in real-time ne-scale measurements of motor performance. (...)