Back

Layer 5 Martinotti cell activation reduces pyramidal cell population plasticity and improves fine motor function

Velica, A.; Malfatti, T.; Winne, J.; Ciralli, B.; Henriksson, K.; Nogueira, I.; Asimakidou, E.; Nascimento, G.; Leao, R.; Kullander, K.

2024-03-12 neuroscience
10.1101/2024.03.10.584276 bioRxiv
Show abstract

During motor activity and motor learning, pyramidal cells in the motor cortex receive inputs from local interneurons as well as deeper structures. Layer 5 pyramidal cells in the primary motor cortex then feed commands to spinal circuits for motor execution. The genetic ablation of layer 5 Chrna2 Martinotti cells, which selectively target pyramidal tract pyramidal cells, resulted in disturbed fine motor functions. Using calcium imaging combined with chemogenetics, we show that activation of layer 5 Chrna2 Martinotti cells during training increases pyramidal cell tuning, changes responses temporal patterns and decreases assembly reconfiguration, while not affecting motor learning success rates. However, in mice that had already learned a reach-and-grasp (prehension) task, Chrna2 Martinotti cell activation resulted in improved prehension and increased power in low theta and high gamma bands of local field potentials in the motor cortex. This work indicates that activation of Chrna2 Martinotti cells reduces pyramidal cell assembly plasticity during learning, possibly facilitating already acquired motor skills.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.