PMID-22388818 Corticostriatal plasticity is necessary for learning intentional neuroprosthetic skills.
- Trained a mouse to control an auditory cursor, as in Kipke's task {99}. Did not cite that paper, claimed it was 'novel'. oops.
- Summed neuronal firing rate of groups of 2 or 4 M1 neurons.
- Auditory feedback was essential for the operant learning.
- One group increased the frequency with increased firing rate; the other decreased tone with increasing FR.
- Specific deletion of striatal NMDA receptors impairs the ability to learn neuroprosthetic skills.
- Hence, they argue, cortico-striatal plastciity is required to learn abstract skills, such as this tone to firing rate target acquisition task.
- Controlled by recording EMG of the vibrissae + injection of lidocane into the whisker pad.
- One reward was sucrose solution; the other was a food pellet. When the rat was satiated on one modality, they showed increased preference for the opposite reward during BMI control -- thereby demonstrating intentionality. Clever!.
- Noticed pronounced oscillatory spike coupling, the coherence of which was increased in low-frequency bands in late learning relative to early learning (figure 3).
- Genetic manipulations: knockin line that expresses Cre recombinase in both striatonigral and striatopallidal medium spiny neurons, crossed with mice carrying a floxed allele of the NMDAR1 gene.
- These animals are relatively normal, and can learn to perform rapid sequential movements, but are unable to learn precise motor sequences.
- Acute pharmacological blockade of NMDAR did not affect performance of the neuroprosthetic skill.
- Hence the deficits in the transgenic mice are due to an inability to perform the skill.
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