Millisecond-Scale Motor Encoding in a Cortical Vocal Area

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Claire Tang, University of California; Diala Chehayeb, Emory University; Kyle Srivastava, Emory University; Ilya Nemenman, Emory University; Samuel Sober, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2014-12-09
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2014 Tang et al.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002018
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: PLoS Biology
• ISSN: 1544-9173
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 12
• Start Page: e1002018
• End Page: e1002018
• Grant/Funding Information: This work was supported by US National Institutes of Health grants R90DA033462 (CT), P30NS069250 (SJS), R01NS084844 (SJS), and R01DC006636 (SJS); National Science Foundation grant IOS-1208126 (IN); and James S. McDonnel Foundation grant 220020321 (IN).
• Research Categories: Engineering, Biomedical; Biology, Neuroscience

Abstract

Studies of motor control have almost universally examined firing rates to investigate how the brain shapes behavior. In principle, however, neurons could encode information through the precise temporal patterning of their spike trains as well as (or instead of) through their firing rates. Although the importance of spike timing has been demonstrated in sensory systems, it is largely unknown whether timing differences in motor areas could affect behavior. We tested the hypothesis that significant information about trial-by-trial variations in behavior is represented by spike timing in the songbird vocal motor system. We found that neurons in motor cortex convey information via spike timing far more often than via spike rate and that the amount of information conveyed at the millisecond timescale greatly exceeds the information available from spike counts. These results demonstrate that information can be represented by spike timing in motor circuits and suggest that timing variations evoke differences in behavior.