Sensorimotor processing articles within Nature

Featured

• Article | 09 May 2012

  Brain-wide neuronal dynamics during motor adaptation in zebrafish

  Neural activity is recorded at the cellular level, throughout the brain of larval zebrafish, while the animals interact with a virtual environment and adapt their motor output to changes in visual feedback; this is used to derive candidates of functional elements driving motor learning.

  • Misha B. Ahrens
  • , Jennifer M. Li
  •  & Ruben Portugues

• Article | 25 April 2012

  Multiple dynamic representations in the motor cortex during sensorimotor learning

  Genetically encoded neural activity markers were used in mice to simultaneously follow large populations of motor cortex neurons during sensorimotor learning, revealing that spatially intermingled neurons represent either sensory or motor behaviour, with population-level representations of subsets of motor programs strengthening as training progressed.

  • D. Huber
  • , D. A. Gutnisky
  •  & K. Svoboda

• News & Views | 04 April 2012

  The symphony of choice

  The brain's parietal cortex seems to orchestrate decision-making without single neurons performing 'solos'. Rather, decision-specific motifs emerge as highly organized sequences of short-lived neuronal activity. See Article p.62

  • Eduardo Dias-Ferreira
  •  & Rui M. Costa

• News | 15 March 2012

  Rejected flies turn to booze

  Single neurotransmitter underlies rewards from sex and alcohol.

  • Ed Yong

• News & Views | 01 February 2012

  Reward alters specific connections

  How does the brain couple a fleeting sensory input to a delayed reward during learning? A study in locusts shows that coincident firing of neurons can 'mark' a neuronal connection for later modulation. See Article p.47

  • Timothy E. Holy

• Letter | 18 January 2012

  Neuron-type-specific signals for reward and punishment in the ventral tegmental area

  Dopaminergic neurons in the mouse ventral tegmental area signal the difference between received and expected reward, whereas GABAergic neurons signal expected reward.

  • Jeremiah Y. Cohen
  • , Sebastian Haesler
  •  & Naoshige Uchida

• Letter | 19 October 2011

  Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain

  • Sue Ramsden
  • , Fiona M. Richardson
  •  & Cathy J. Price

• Letter | 28 September 2011

  Primary motor cortex underlies multi-joint integration for fast feedback control

  • J. Andrew Pruszynski
  • , Isaac Kurtzer
  •  & Stephen H. Scott

• Letter | 20 July 2011

  Neural network computation with DNA strand displacement cascades

  • Lulu Qian
  • , Erik Winfree
  •  & Jehoshua Bruck

• Article | 24 October 2010

  Support for a synaptic chain model of neuronal sequence generation

  When songbirds sing, neurons in premotor areas fire coordinated bursts precisely timed to the dynamics of the song. The cellular mechanism for such sequence generation is unknown. These authors make the technical breakthrough of recording intracellularly in HVC neurons in singing birds, allowing them to test models of burst generation. They found that membrane potential rapidly depolarizes 5–10 ms before burst onset, consistent with models in which HVC neurons form synaptically connected chains.

  • Michael A. Long
  • , Dezhe Z. Jin
  •  & Michale S. Fee

• Research Highlights | 15 September 2010

  Psychology: Gaming the brain