The Importance of Accounting for Movement When Relating Neuronal Activity to Sensory and Cognitive Processes

• Published in: The Journal of neuroscience Vol. 42; no. 8; pp. 1375 - 1382
• Main Authors: Zagha, Edward, Erlich, Jeffrey C., Lee, Soohyun, Lur, Gyorgy, O'Connor, Daniel H., Steinmetz, Nicholas A., Stringer, Carsen, Yang, Hongdian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Society for Neuroscience 23.02.2022
• Subjects: Animals; Brain - physiology; Case studies; Cognition - physiology; Cognitive ability; Couplings; Humans; Mice; Movement - physiology; Neurons; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; TechSights; Wakefulness; sensorimotor; cognition; behavior; movement; neural coding
• ISSN: 0270-6474; 1529-2401; 1529-2401
• DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1919-21.2021

A surprising finding of recent studies in mouse is the dominance of widespread movement-related activity throughout the brain, including in early sensory areas. In awake subjects, failing to account for movement risks misattributing movement-related activity to other (e.g., sensory or cognitive) processes. In this article, we (1) review task designs for separating task-related and movement-related activity, (2) review three “case studies” in which not considering movement would have resulted in critically different interpretations of neuronal function, and (3) discuss functional couplings that may prevent us from ever fully isolating sensory, motor, and cognitive-related activity. Our main thesis is that neural signals related to movement are ubiquitous, and therefore ought to be considered first and foremost when attempting to correlate neuronal activity with task-related processes.