Neural populations in the dorsal and ventral cervical spinal cord share temporal dynamics during reach
- 1National Institute of Neuroscience, NCNP
Abstract
Neural population dynamics provide a popular framework for studying motor cortex function. However, whether such dynamics reflect stage-specific computations or are shared across the input and output stages of a sensorimotor circuit is unknown. In the spinal cord, afferent inputs and motor outputs are segregated by anatomical depth. Here we developed depth-resolved Neuropixels recordings from the rat cervical spinal cord during targeted reaching behavior. Across our recordings, population activity was low-dimensional and organized into transient, rotational and target-specific dynamical motifs. Despite differences in single-neuron activity by depth, dorsal and ventral populations expressed nearly identical dynamics across targets and animals. The dominant target-invariant component was strikingly synchronized across depths, whereas other components, including the target-specific component, showed condition-dependent ventral-to-dorsal delays with timing consistent with movement-related feedback. Thus, cervical spinal population dynamics span sensory and motor territories, and may reflect shared coordination of activity rather than purely state-specific local processing.
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BibTeX
@misc{smith2026neural,
title = {{Neural populations in the dorsal and ventral cervical spinal cord share temporal dynamics during reach}},
author = {T. Smith and S. Egawa and A. Kosugi and K. Maeda and c. Sugai and A. Yaron and K. Seki},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.12.758656},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758656v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Neural populations in the dorsal and ventral cervical spinal cord share temporal dynamics during reach
AU - T. Smith
AU - S. Egawa
AU - A. Kosugi
AU - K. Maeda
AU - c. Sugai
AU - A. Yaron
AU - K. Seki
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/12
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.12.758656
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758656v1
AB - Neural population dynamics provide a popular framework for studying motor cortex function. However, whether such dynamics reflect stage-specific computations or are shared across the input and output stages of a sensorimotor circuit is unknown. In the spinal cord, afferent inputs and motor outputs are segregated by anatomical depth. Here we developed depth-resolved Neuropixels recordings from the rat cervical spinal cord during targeted reaching behavior. Across our recordings, population activity was low-dimensional and organized into transient, rotational and target-specific dynamical motifs. Despite differences in single-neuron activity by depth, dorsal and ventral populations expressed nearly identical dynamics across targets and animals. The dominant target-invariant component was strikingly synchronized across depths, whereas other components, including the target-specific component, showed condition-dependent ventral-to-dorsal delays with timing consistent with movement-related feedback. Thus, cervical spinal population dynamics span sensory and motor territories, and may reflect shared coordination of activity rather than purely state-specific local processing.
ER -