Mechanisms for temporal control of voluntary movements by the cerebral cortex.

我们按照计划进行了一系列的实验来研究前额皮质和前运动区域的参与，然后进行了额外的实验来扩展我们原计划的研究。所有的研究结果都是成功的，产生的发现和结果作为科学论文发表。从我们的发现开始，内侧额叶运动区，前辅助运动区和辅助运动区，在组织多个运动的时间序列中起关键作用，我们分析了这些区域的细胞活动。我们发现辅助运动区域包括在时间序列中连接事件的细胞，而前辅助运动区域的细胞表达要执行的运动的等级顺序，也表示即将到来的序列的更新。我们随后分析了前额叶皮层的细胞活动，以阐明其在整合存储在记忆中的信息（过去信息）、当前可用的感觉信息（当前信息）和即将到来的运动性质（未来信息）方面的作用。我们发现，在前额皮质中，表达过去和现在信息的细胞活动被整合以产生未来信息。此外，我们通过实验揭示了运动前皮层在规划空间目标和即将到来的目标到达运动中使用的身体部位中的作用。我们发现，细胞活动反映了整合空间目标和身体部位信息的过程，这些信息是计划未来运动所必需的。

We performed a series of experiments to investigate participation of prefrontal cortex and premotor areas as planned, and then carried out additional sets of experiments to extend our originally planned study. All studies turned out to be successful, yielding findings and results that were published as scientific papers. Starting from our findings that medial frontal motor areas, presupplementary motor and supplementary motor areas, are critically involved in organizing temporal sequence of multiple movements, we analyzed cellular activity in these areas. We found that the supplementary motor area includes cells that are acting to link events in a time series, whereas cells in the presupplementary motor area express the rank order of movements to be performed, and also signify up-dating of forthcoming sequences. We subsequently analyzed cellular activity in the prefrontal cortex to clarify its role on integrating information stored in memory (past information), currently available sensory information (present information), and the nature of forthcoming movement (future information). We found that cellular activity expressing the past and present information are integrated to produce the future information inside the prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, we conducted experiments to reveal the role of premotor cortex in planning the spatial target and the body part to be used for a forthcoming target-reaching movement. We found cellular activity that reflect the process of integrating spatial-target and body-part information necessary to plan future movements.