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Record W4411509503 · doi:10.1101/2025.06.20.660772

Cortical sculpting of a rhythmic motor program

2025· preprint· en· W4411509503 on OpenAlexfundno aff
Eric A. Kirk, Britton Sauerbrei

Bibliographic record

VenuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicZebrafish Biomedical Research Applications
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsComputer scienceNeuroscienceObstacleTree traversalSomatosensory systemMotor controlMotor cortexRepresentation (politics)Central pattern generatorRhythmPsychologyPhysics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Motor cortex is the principal driver of discrete, voluntary movements like reaching. Correspondingly, current theories describe muscle activity as a function of cortical dynamics. Tasks like speech and locomotion, however, require the integration of voluntary commands with ongoing movements orchestrated by largely independent subcortical centers. In such cases, motor cortex must receive inputs representing the state of the environment and the state of subcortical networks, then transform these inputs into commands that modulate the rhythmic motor pattern. Here, we study this transformation in mice performing an obstacle traversal task, which combines a spinal locomotor pattern with voluntary cortical adjustments. Cortical dynamics contain a prominent representation of motor preparation that is linked to obstacle proximity and robust to removal of somatosensory or visual input, and also maintain a representation of the state of the spinal pattern generator. Readout signals resembling commands for obstacle traversal are consistent across trials, but small in amplitude. Using computational modeling, we identify a simple algorithm that generates the appropriate commands through phase-dependent gating. Together, these results reveal a regime in which motor cortex does not fully specify muscle activity, but must sculpt an ongoing, spinally-generated program to flexibly control behavior in a complex and changing environment.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.002
Threshold uncertainty score0.005

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.013
GPT teacher head0.279
Teacher spread0.267 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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Same venuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)Same topicZebrafish Biomedical Research ApplicationsFrench-language works237,207