Graphical illustration of the examine. Credit score: College of Parma
A examine printed in Science reveals new mechanisms by which the mind controls pure actions. The outcomes problem a few of the classical views about how the motor system works and open up doable new functions in neurorehabilitation and robotics.
Utilizing new telemetric gadgets, researchers recorded the exercise of lots of of neurons from the motor areas of the brains of monkeys that have been fully free to precise spontaneous habits, similar to strolling, climbing, or yawning. This represented an enormous step ahead in comparison with earlier research, as a result of the out there applied sciences pressured researchers to review motionless brains throughout realized and stereotyped actions.
The novel strategy, as an alternative, opens the chance to know how the mind orchestrates spontaneous actions in pure conditions.
“Our brains are constantly moving,” explains Luca Bonini, head of the analysis undertaking, “and this new strategy has modified the classical concept that particular mind areas, and even single neuronal cells, management particular actions—similar to biting, consuming, or greedy.
“According to our results, just as the individual keys of a piano can compose many different melodies, the neurons in the motor areas of our brain create complex synergies, allowing us to organize the variety of spontaneous actions that we are capable of performing, some of which until now were even impossible to study in the laboratory.”
Collaboration with bioengineers from the Sant’Anna College in Pisa made it doable to decode the complexity of this neural exercise and predict the spontaneous actions the animals have been about to carry out utilizing solely the indicators generated by neurons.
“Our results,” says researcher Alberto Mazzoni, “indicate that the neuronal activity recorded during spontaneous behavior is much more informative than that obtained in classical laboratory contexts. This information allows us to understand how the brain controls the production of voluntary actions differently depending on the context.”
The excessive neurological and behavioral similarity with people means that this end result may have related scientific functions.
“The results obtained through this interdisciplinary collaboration open up new and important translational perspectives for neurotechnology and neurorehabilitation,” provides Silvestro Micera.
“We hope that our approach can contribute to the transition from classical neurophysiology to neuroethology in many studies on the relationship between brain and behavior, improving the quality of life of animals even during experiments, and consequently, the validity of the results of neuroscientific research on non-human primates, which, as this work shows, are still fundamental and irreplaceable,” conclude Francesca Lanzarini, Monica Maranesi, Elena Hilary Rondoni and Davide Albertini, co-first authors of the paper.
Extra info:
Francesca Lanzarini et al, Neuroethology of pure actions in freely transferring monkeys, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adq6510
Offered by
Sant’Anna College of Superior Research, Pisa
Quotation:
The premise of voluntary actions: Monkey examine challenges classical views on how mind controls pure actions (2025, January 9)
retrieved 9 January 2025
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