Optimal Anticipatory Control As a Theory of Motor Preparation: A Thalamo-cortical Circuit Model

Overview

Journal Neuron

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Neurology

Date 2021 Mar 31

PMID 33789082

Citations 33

Authors

Ta-Chu Kao

Mahdieh S Sadabadi

Guillaume Hennequin

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Across a range of motor and cognitive tasks, cortical activity can be accurately described by low-dimensional dynamics unfolding from specific initial conditions on every trial. These "preparatory states" largely determine the subsequent evolution of both neural activity and behavior, and their importance raises questions regarding how they are, or ought to be, set. Here, we formulate motor preparation as optimal anticipatory control of future movements and show that the solution requires a form of internal feedback control of cortical circuit dynamics. In contrast to a simple feedforward strategy, feedback control enables fast movement preparation by selectively controlling the cortical state in the small subspace that matters for the upcoming movement. Feedback but not feedforward control explains the orthogonality between preparatory and movement activity observed in reaching monkeys. We propose a circuit model in which optimal preparatory control is implemented as a thalamo-cortical loop gated by the basal ganglia.

Citing Articles

Cerebellar output shapes cortical preparatory activity during motor adaptation.

Israely S, Ninou H, Rajchert O, Elmaleh L, Harel R, Mawase F Nat Commun. 2025; 16(1):2574.

PMID: 40089504 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57832-4.

Cerebellar output shapes cortical preparatory activity during motor adaptation.

Israely S, Ninou H, Rajchert O, Elmaleh L, Harel R, Mawase F bioRxiv. 2025; .

PMID: 40060411 PMC: 11888169. DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.12.603354.

Effects of noise and metabolic cost on cortical task representations.

Stroud J, Wojcik M, Jensen K, Kusunoki M, Kadohisa M, Buckley M Elife. 2025; 13.

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Dynamical constraints on neural population activity.

Oby E, Degenhart A, Grigsby E, Motiwala A, McClain N, Marino P Nat Neurosci. 2025; 28(2):383-393.

PMID: 39825141 PMC: 11802451. DOI: 10.1038/s41593-024-01845-7.

Cerebellar-driven cortical dynamics can enable task acquisition, switching and consolidation.

Pemberton J, Chadderton P, Costa R Nat Commun. 2024; 15(1):10913.

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