Emergent coordination underlying learning to reach to grasp with a brain-machine interface.

The development of coordinated reach-to-grasp movement has been well studied in infants and children. However, the role of motor cortex during this development is unclear because it is difficult to study in humans. We took the approach of using a brain-machine interface (BMI) paradigm in rhesus macaques with prior therapeutic amputations to examine the emergence of novel, coordinated reach to grasp.

Analysis of graph invariants in functional neocortical circuitry reveals generalized features common to three areas of sensory cortex.

Correlations in local neocortical spiking activity can provide insight into the underlying organization of cortical microcircuitry. However, identifying structure in patterned multi-neuronal spiking remains a daunting task due to the high dimensionality of the activity. Using two-photon imaging, we monitored spontaneous circuit dynamics in large, densely sampled neuronal populations within slices of mouse primary auditory, somatosensory, and visual cortex.