Search bioRxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.06.23.167965

Response preparation involves a release of intracortical inhibition in task-irrelevant muscles

Gomez, I. N.·Ormiston, K.·Greenhouse, I.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Action preparation involves widespread modulation of motor system excitability, but the precise mechanisms are unknown. In this study, we investigated whether intracortical inhibition changes in task-irrelevant muscle representations during action preparation. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) combined with electromyography in healthy human adults to measure motor evoked potentials (MEPs) and cortical silent periods (CSPs) in task-irrelevant muscles during the preparatory period of simple delayed response tasks. In Experiment 1, participants responded with the left-index finger in one task condition and the right-index finger in another task condition, while MEPs and CSPs were measured from the contralateral non-responding and tonically contracted index finger. During Experiment 2, participants responded with the right pinky finger while MEPs and CSPs were measured from the tonically contracted left-index finger. In both experiments, MEPs and CSPs were compared between the task preparatory period and a resting intertrial baseline. The CSP duration during response preparation decreased from baseline in every case. A laterality difference was also observed in Experiment 1, with a greater CSP reduction during the preparation of left finger responses compared to right finger responses. MEP amplitudes showed no modulation during movement preparation in any of the three response conditions. These findings indicate cortical inhibition associated with task-irrelevant muscles is transiently released during action preparation and implicate a novel mechanism for the controlled and coordinated release of motor cortex inhibition. New & NoteworthyIn this study we observed the first evidence of a release of intracortical inhibition in task-irrelevant muscle representations during response preparation. We applied transcranial magnetic stimulation to elicit cortical silent periods in task-irrelevant muscles during response preparation and observed a consistent decrease in the silent period duration relative to a resting baseline. These findings address the question of whether cortical mechanisms underlie widespread modulation in motor excitability during response preparation.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

neurosciencePreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Gomez, I. N., Ormiston, K., Greenhouse, I.. 2020-06-24. Response preparation involves a release of intracortical inhibition in task-irrelevant muscles. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.23.167965

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

Same Movements, Different Skills: How Context Shapes Learning in Humans and Neural Networks

What determines whether experiences are integrated into shared representations or split? Motor skill learning offers a revealing test: when two tasks require an identical sequence of movements, both intuition and theory suggest that practice in one should generalize to the other. Yet we find that changing context can make identical movements different skills. In simple recurrent networks trained on the same sequence across contexts, splitting was greatest when strong contextual inputs coincided with a high initial weight scale; neither alone sufficed. Greater representational separation coincided with separate context-specific learning curves. Humans practicing the same finger sequence while alternating between two performance-irrelevant contexts likewise exhibited context-specific curves, rather than the single continuous trajectory observed when practicing in a single context. State-space modeling favored split learning states in humans and very weakly coupled states in the most context-dependent networks. These findings have broader implications for understanding how learning generalizes across contexts.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

Postpartum resource scarcity reshapes maternal care, offspring prioritization, and the steroid-sensitive medial preoptic area

Parental care requires balancing offspring needs with environmental constraints, yet how resource scarcity alters the organization of maternal responses remains poorly understood. Here, we examined maternal behavior, offspring prioritization, and steroid receptor-associated extracellular matrix organization in postpartum rats exposed to limited bedding and nesting (LBN) or control conditions with ample nesting materials. LBN increased pup-directed and reduced self-directed behaviors but also increased behavioral entropy, a measure of behavioral fragmentation, indicating less predictable caregiving sequences. LBN dams preferentially retrieved male pups first, whereas control dams preferentially retrieved females first. LBN also increased the proportion of pup-investigation time directed toward males compared with controls. In offspring on postnatal day 10, corticosterone was elevated in female but not male LBN pups, a pattern that paralleled the maternal male bias. To identify associated neurobiological changes, we assessed steroid receptors and extracellular matrix organization in the medial preoptic area (mPOA), a key region for maternal behavior. LBN increased numbers of estrogen receptor (ER)- and androgen receptor (AR)-immunoreactive cells, reduced perineuronal net (PNN) abundance, and decreased receptor-positive cell enwrapment. Because PNNs constrain structural plasticity, these findings suggest that the postpartum environment alters the organization of steroid receptor-associated extracellular matrix, potentially modulating experience-dependent plasticity in neurosteroid-sensitive circuits. In sum, LBN increases the levels of maternal engagement while reshaping its temporal organization and allocation, accompanied by selective remodeling of steroid-sensitive preoptic architecture. Therefore, maternal adaptation to adversity may be better understood as changes in caregiving allocation strategies rather than a simple gain or loss of maternal care.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

The Computational Grammar of Human Behaviour in a Biological Environment

Human behaviour unfolds as an extended stream of spontaneous actions shaped by environmental demands and the agent's goals. The organisation of these actions, situated between setting abstract goals and concrete movement execution, remains poorly characterised. Here, we introduce DynaClade, an unsupervised temporal action segmentation algorithm for human full-body motion capture data, and apply it to freely moving participants navigating ecologically realistic risky foraging environments in virtual reality. DynaClade identifies discrete actions whose kinematic characteristics and spatial distributions correspond to environmental affordances, supporting the validity of the approach. Among these actions, we discovered a hitherto undescribed movement pattern defined by increased body sway without locomotion. Action sequences were highly non-random and showed clear history dependence beyond first-order Markov structure, most of which was explained by a second-order prediction. This higher-order structure was well captured in a hidden Markov model, in which some of the observed actions were associated with more than one latent state. Each of these latent states corresponded to the same action in a distinct action context. These findings suggest that spontaneous human actions are predominantly selected based on the current action and context, rather than following pre-planned or habitually assembled sequences.

neuroscience↗