Скачать или смотреть Brain dynamics in the primate audiomotor system during rhythmic timing

Professor Hugo Merchant from Neurobiology Institute UNAM presented this Departmental Seminar.

ABSTRACT:
The ability to extract the regular pulse in music and to respond in synchrony to this pulse is called beat synchronisation and is a natural human behaviour exhibited during dancing and musical ensemble playing. In this study we recorded the simultaneous activity of hundreds of cells in the medial premotor areas during a rhythmic tapping task where monkeys synchronised their movements to a visual or auditory metronome whose tempo changed from trial to trial. The aim was to determine how the geometry and kinematics of state-space neural population trajectories controlled the rhythmic timing behaviour.

We found that more than half of the recorded neurons were engaged in the task, showing selective responses that multiplexed the sequential and temporal structure of rhythmic tapping. Notably, we also found subpopulations of neurons that were selective to the metronome’s modality. Results support the notion that the premotor areas work as dynamic system to represent different aspects of rhythmic timing behaviours.