Scientists Show How Motor Cortex’s Effects on Movement Can Be Better Understood

The June 3 issue of Nature reports that a new model for understanding how nerve cells in the brain control movement may reveal the secrets of the motor cortex — a critical region that has for a long time resisted scientists’ efforts to understand it.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford University and Columbia University have demonstrated that by examining groups of motor cortex neurons instead of individual nerve cells, the motor cortex’s effects on movement can be much more easily understood. In the study, they identified rhythmic brain cell-firing patterns coordinated across populations of neurons in the motor cortex. The scientists then linked those patterns to different shoulder muscle movements. For more information, click here to read the full release.