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Separating cognitive and motor processes in the behaving mouse.

Munib A Hasnain^1,2, Jaclyn E Birnbaum^2,3, Juan Luis Ugarte Nunez¹

¹Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.

Nature Neuroscience

|February 5, 2025

Summary

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This summary is machine-generated.

Cognitive processes in animals are linked to movements, but a new study shows they are distinct. Researchers isolated cognitive and motor neural dynamics, revealing separate cell populations encode each process.

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Animal Behavior
Cognitive Science

Background:

Complex animal behaviors involve cognitive processes and movements, which are strongly correlated with neural activity.
A key question is whether cognitive and motor processes share neural mechanisms or are separable.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop methods for assessing the separability of cognitive and motor processes.
To isolate and characterize the neural dynamics associated with distinct cognitive and motor components.

Main Methods:

Designed a novel behavioral task in mice involving multiple cognitive processes.
Applied a subspace decomposition technique to isolate cognitive and motor neural dynamics.
Analyzed neural population activity to identify cell populations encoding each component.

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Main Results:

Neural dynamics previously attributed to cognition were found to be contaminated by movement-related activity.
Isolated cognitive and motor components exhibited distinct dynamical trajectories.
Largely separate neuronal populations were identified for encoding cognitive versus motor processes.

Conclusions:

Cognitive and motor processes in complex behaviors are largely separable at the neural level.
Accurate isolation of cognitive and motor dynamics is crucial for understanding neural circuit function.
Findings inform the development of conceptual and computational models of the brain.