Towards a neurobiology of "oromanual" motor control: behavioral analysis and neural mechanisms

项目总结 这项提议的目标是开发新的方法来研究“口腔”运动控制的神经生物学-- 以目标为导向，协调与下巴和手相关的结构的运动，如处理食物 行为，一种自然的、在行为学上必不可少的活动。手和下巴的动作传统上是 完全分开学习--例如，分别进行伸手抓住和咀嚼等动作。然而，许多人 哺乳动物，特别是灵长类和啮齿类动物，使用协调的手和下巴运动来进行自然行为， 尤其是食物处理。既不是协调的手下巴运动的精确运动学，也不是潜在的 神经机制是很好理解的。在这里，我们提出了一个研究计划，将开始解决这一问题 通过一系列探索性活动缩小知识差距。在口腔操作食物的过程中，肌电 方法将被用来同时记录咬肌和前肢的活动，以及机器学习- 协助跟踪千赫视频捕捉到的运动。固定头部和自由移动的范例都将 将被开发，以实现神经活动的电生理和光学记录 食物搬运过程中的运动/额叶皮质区域。皮质活动将被分析与不同的行为 模式和子运动，并告知活动单位作为一个群体如何对整体皮质活动做出贡献 图案和手与下巴的互动。将开发电路映射范例来剖析中介的电路 沿咬肌和/或前肢相关皮质球通路撞击咬肌运动的交通 三叉神经运动核内的神经元。总体结果将是一套新的工具，试验性的 范例和概念框架，使今后能够深入研究口腔运动控制。

PROJECT SUMMARY The goal of this proposal is to develop new methods to study the neurobiology of “oromanual” motor control – goal-directed, coordinated movements of jaw- and hand-related structures, as exemplified by food-handling behavior, a natural and ethologically essential activity. Movements of the hands and jaw have traditionally been studied entirely separately – e.g. actions such as reach-to-grasp and mastication, respectively. Yet many mammals, especially primates and rodents, use coordinated hand-and-jaw movements for natural behaviors, particularly food handling. Neither the precise kinematics of coordinated hand-jaw movements nor the underlying neural mechanisms are well understood. Here we propose a research program that will begin to address this gap in knowledge through a series of exploratory activities. During oromanual food-handling, electromyography methods will be used to concurrently record masseter and forelimb activity, together with machine learning- assisted tracking of movements captured by kilohertz video. Both head-fixed and freely moving paradigms will be developed, to enable implementation of electrophysiological and optical recordings of neural activity across motor/frontal cortical areas during food-handling. Cortical activity will be analyzed in relation to distinct behavioral modes and sub-movements, and inform how active units contribute as a population to the overall cortical activity pattern and hand-jaw interactions. Circuit-mapping paradigms will be developed to dissect the circuits mediating communication along masseter- and/or forelimb-related corticobulbar pathways impinging on masseter motor neurons in the motor trigeminal nucleus. The overall outcome will be a novel suite of tools, experimental paradigms, and conceptual framework to enable future in-depth investigation of oromanual motor control.