Disrupting cortico-cerebellar communication impairs dexterity.

ABSTRACT: 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 i

SUBMITTER: Guo JZ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8321550 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature