Séminaire de Maurizio Mattia

Friday March 31, 2023, at 14:30, at INT Henri Gastaut meeting room

Maurizio Mattia (Italian Institute of Health, Roma)
invited by Bjorg Kilavik

A mechanistic view of the premotor cortex in the decision to move or stop

Abstract

Understanding the mechanistic roots of the neuronal dynamics underpinning action planning and execution is a long standing scientific endeavor which still leaves unanswered questions regarding the dynamical features logically necessary to make the movement. We contribute to this scientific debate by studying the network dynamics of motor cortices of nonhuman primates performing a countermanding task. This task requires to withhold the reaching movement to a target in a fraction of trials when an unpredictable stop signal appears. Resorting to the state space analysis of the neural activity recorded from a multielectrode array in the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd), I will show that such activity during active inhibition is confined in an “output-null” subspace. In this framework, movement execution requires the neural activity to escape from this subspace. Heterogeneity of cell assemblies appears to play a role in determining such threshold mechanism and the maturation of motor plans.