ArticleNature neuroscience2024
The role of motor cortex in motor sequence execution depends on demands for flexibility.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Transcranial direct current stimulation enhances delayed retention after 5 days of lower-limb motor skill learning.The Journal of physiology · 2026Trial
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- Neurosensory Integration and Balance Adaptation: Personalization of Postural Control Through the Prism of Individual Spatial Perception.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Distinct sensorimotor encoding in tuft dendrites and somata associated with action, correction, and learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Sensory-to-motor transformations: From serial pipelines to dynamic, distributed processes.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Spatial connectivity for local cortical homogeneity.Research square · 2026Article
- Motor Cortical Computations Underlying Natural Dexterous Movement in Freely Flying Bats.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Motor cortex somatostatin interneurons adaptively shape the structure of action sequences.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Mouse sensorimotor cortex reflects complex kinematic details during reaching and grasping.eLife · 2026Article
- How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition?Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Gradual consolidation of skilled sequential movements in primary motor cortex of non-human primates.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Routing of task-relevant information in mouse PPC during continuous visuomotor control.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural Associative Skill Memories for Safer Robotics and Modeling Human Sensorimotor Repertoires.Neural computation · 2025Article
- Neurodegenerative Disease Movement Disorders and Dorsal Striatum-Mediated Imbalance of Habitual Motor Sequences.Molecular neurobiology · 2025Review
- Spacetime concordance in the primate cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Encoding of motor sequences in primate globus pallidus and motor cortex: Uniform preference for ordinal position.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Research and Prospects of Digital Twin-Based Fault Diagnosis of Electric Machines.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Level of M1 GABAB predicts micro offline consolidation of motor learning during wakefulness.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The role of the motor cortex in executing motor sequences is widely debated, with studies supporting disparate views. Here we probe the degree to which the motor cortex's engagement depends on task demands, specifically whether its role differs for highly practiced, or 'automatic', sequences versus flexible sequences informed by external cues. To test this, we trained rats to generate three-element motor sequences either by overtraining them on a single sequence or by having them follow instructive visual cues. Lesioning motor cortex showed that it is necessary for flexible cue-driven motor sequences but dispensable for single automatic behaviors trained in isolation. However, when an automatic motor sequence was practiced alongside the flexible task, it became motor cortex dependent, suggesting that an automatic motor sequence fails to consolidate subcortically when the same sequence is produced also in a flexible context. A simple neural network model recapitulated these results and offered a circuit-level explanation. Our results critically delineate the role of the motor cortex in motor sequence execution, describing the conditions under which it is engaged and the functions it fulfills, thus reconciling seemingly conflicting views about motor cortex's role in motor sequence generation.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.