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1. Different population dynamics in the supplementary motor area and motor cortex during reaching

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05146-z  

   Lara, A. H. ; Cunningham, J. P. ; Churchland, M. M. ( December 2018 , Nature Communications)
2. A Novel Application of Levenshtein Distance for Assessment of High-Level Motor Planning Underlying Performance During Learning of Complex Motor Sequences

   https://doi.org/10.1123/jmld.2018-0060  

   Hauge, Theresa C. ; Katz, Garrett E. ; Davis, Gregory P. ; Jaquess, Kyle J. ; Reinhard, Matthew J. ; Costanzo, Michelle E. ; Reggia, James A. ; Gentili, Rodolphe J. ( April 2020 , Journal of Motor Learning and Development)

   null (Ed.)

   Few studies have examined high-level motor plans underlying cognitive-motor performance during practice of complex action sequences. These investigations have assessed performance through fairly simple metrics without examining how practice affects the structures of action sequences. By adapting the Levenshtein distance (LD) method to the motor domain, we propose a computational approach to accurately capture performance dynamics during practice of action sequences. Practice performance dynamics were assessed by computing the LD based on the number of insertions, deletions, and substitutions of actions needed to transform any sequence into a reference sequence (having a minimal number of actions to complete the task). Also, combining LD-based performance with mental workload metrics allowed assessment of cognitive-motor efficiency dynamics. This approach was tested on the Tower of Hanoi task. The findings revealed that throughout practice this method could capture: i) action sequence performance improvements as indexed by a reduced LD (decrease of insertions and substitutions), ii) structural modifications of the high-level plans, iii) an attenuation of mental workload, and iv) enhanced cognitive-motor efficiency. This effort complements prior work examining the practice of complex action sequences in healthy adults and has potential for probing cognitive-motor impairment in clinical populations as well as the development/assessment of cognitive robotic controllers. 

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3. Children are suboptimal in adapting motor exploration to task dimensionality during motor learning

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2021.136355  

   Lee, Mei-Hua ; Patel, Priya ; Ranganathan, Rajiv ( January 2022 , Neuroscience Letters)
4. Aberrant Middle Prefrontal-Motor Cortex Connectivity Mediates Motor Inhibitory Biomarker in Schizophrenia

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2018.06.007  

   Du, Xiaoming ; Choa, Fow-Sen ; Chiappelli, Joshua ; Wisner, Krista M. ; Wittenberg, George ; Adhikari, Bhim ; Bruce, Heather ; Rowland, Laura M. ; Kochunov, Peter ; Hong, L. Elliot ( January 2019 , Biological Psychiatry)
5. Population Activity in Motor Cortex is Influenced by the Contexts of the Motor Behavior

   https://doi.org/10.1109/NER49283.2021.9441430  

   Ma, Xuan ; Bodkin, Kevin L. ; Miller, Lee E. ( May 2021 , 10th International IEEE/EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering)

   Most sensorimotor studies investigating the covariation of populations of neurons in primary motor cortex (M1) have considered only a few trained movements made under highly constrained conditions. However, motor behaviors in daily living happen in a far more complex and varied contexts. It is unclear whether M1 neurons would have different population responses in a more naturalistic, unconstrained setting, including requirements to accommodate multiple limbs and body posture, and more extensive proprioceptive inputs. Here, we recorded M1 spiking signals while a monkey performed hand grasp movements in two different contexts: one in the typical constrained lab setting, and the other while moving freely in a large plastic cage. We compared the covariance patterns of the neural activity during movements across the two contexts. We found that the neural covariation patterns accompanying two different hand grasps in the unconstrained context were largely preserved, while they differed across contexts, even for the same type of grasp. We also found that the M1 population activity was confined to context-dependent neural manifolds, but these manifolds were not completely independent, as some dimensions appeared to be shared across the contexts. These results suggest that the coordinated activity of M1 neurons is strongly dependent on behavioral context, in ways that were not entirely anticipated. 

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