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Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex.

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

Somatosensory, Motor, and Association Cortex

The somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobes is crucial for interpreting sensory data such as touch, temperature, and proprioception. The somatosensory cortex, situated in the parietal lobes, plays a vital role in interpreting sensory information like touch, temperature, and proprioception—awareness of body position. This specialized brain region features an organized structure wherein neurons at the top primarily process sensations originating from the lower body. In contrast, those at the...

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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

In Vivo Visualization of Spontaneous Activity in Neonatal Mouse Sensory Cortex at a Single-Neuron Resolution

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Published on: November 21, 2023

Neural activity profiles reveal overlapping, intermingled subpopulations spanning area borders in mouse sensorimotor

Sohrab Salimian¹, Harrison Grier¹, Matthew Tyler Kaufman^2,3,4

¹Committee on Computational Neuroscience, The University of Chicago, Chicago, United States.

|July 3, 2026

Summary

Researchers mapped neural activity in mice during a reach-to-grasp task, revealing distinct neuronal subpopulations across sensorimotor cortex. These findings uncover novel organization principles for motor control computations.

Keywords:

motor cortex mouse neuroscience reaching and grasping somatosensory cortex two-photon imaging

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Recording and Analyzing Multimodal Large-Scale Neuronal Ensemble Dynamics on CMOS-Integrated High-Density Microelectrode Array

Recording and Analyzing Multimodal Large-Scale Neuronal Ensemble Dynamics on CMOS-Integrated High-Density Microelectrode Array

Published on: March 8, 2024

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Systems Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience

Background:

Cortical control of movement involves distributed neural computations across interconnected brain regions.
Existing anatomical atlases provide a coarse understanding of function, but detailed organization of behaviorally relevant neural activity remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the large-scale spatial organization of neural activity across sensorimotor cortex during a reach-to-grasp task.
To characterize neuronal response properties and identify distinct subpopulations within sensorimotor areas.

Main Methods:

Cellular-resolution, two-photon calcium imaging of over 39,000 layer 2/3 neurons in five sensorimotor cortical regions of head-fixed mice.
Mice were trained on a 15-target reach-to-grasp task.
Characterization of neuronal activity using interpretable metrics and nonlinear dimensionality reduction.

Main Results:

Neuronal response properties exhibited large-scale spatial structure, with abrupt shifts at anatomical borders between motor and somatosensory areas.
Motor areas showed sharper tuning and more linear relationships with target location compared to heterogeneous responses in somatosensory areas.
Nonlinear dimensionality reduction revealed distinct neuronal subpopulations with characteristic activity patterns, spatially intermingled across multiple cortical areas.

Conclusions:

Sensorimotor cortex displays novel activity structures with distinct, overlapping neuronal subpopulations during reach-to-grasp behavior.
Understanding these subpopulations and their distributed nature is crucial for deciphering motor control mechanisms.
The findings challenge simplistic area-specific functional models and highlight a more complex, integrated neural architecture.