Exploration biases forelimb reaching strategies.

The brain can generate actions, such as reaching to a target, using different movement strategies. We investigate how such strategies are learned in a task where perched head-fixed mice learn to reach to an invisible target area from a set start position using a joystick. This can be achieved by learning to move in a specific direction or to a specific endpoint location.

Dissociable roles of thalamic nuclei in the refinement of reaches to spatial targets.

Reaches are complex movements that are critical for survival, and encompass the control of different aspects such as direction, speed, and endpoint precision. Complex movements have been postulated to be learned and controlled through distributed motor networks, of which the thalamus is a highly connected node. Still, the role of different thalamic circuits in learning and controlling specific aspects of reaches has not been investigated.

Invariant neural dynamics drive commands to control different movements.

It has been proposed that the nervous system has the capacity to generate a wide variety of movements because it reuses some invariant code. Previous work has identified that dynamics of neural population activity are similar during different movements, where dynamics refer to how the instantaneous spatial pattern of population activity changes in time. Here, we test whether invariant dynamics of neural populations are actually used to issue the commands that direct movement.

Causal viewpoint and ensemble interpretation: from physics to the social sciences.

In this article, we assert that, for the construction of quantum -analogous (as opposed to quantum -analogous) probabilistic models of the social (e.g. economics-financial) reality, the use of the notion of causality and the idea of an ensemble of similarly prepared systems in a socially analogous manner could be essential.

Exploration biases how forelimb reaches to a spatial target are learned.

The brain can learn to generate actions, such as reaching to a target, using different movement strategies. Understanding how different variables bias which strategies are learned to produce such a reach is important for our understanding of the neural bases of movement. Here we introduce a novel spatial forelimb target task in which perched head-fixed mice learn to reach to a circular target area from a set start position using a joystick.