Journal
NEURON
Volume 110, Issue 17, Pages 2790-+Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.06.006
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Funding
- NIH/NINDS [NS091144]
- Klingenstein Foundation Aligning Science Across Parkinson's [ASAP-020551]
- GG gift fund
- Stanford School of Medicine Dean's Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Parkinson's Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship
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This study reveals that synaptic changes in the motor cortex and striatum play a crucial role in learning and consolidating new motor skills. The formation of long-lasting motor memory traces is associated with reactivation of specific neurons in the motor cortex and an increase in their output strength onto striatal projection neurons.
Learning and consolidation of new motor skills require plasticity in the motor cortex and striatum, two key motor regions of the brain. However, how neurons undergo synaptic changes and become recruited during motor learning to form a memory engram remains unknown. Here, we train mice on a motor learning task and use a genetic approach to identify and manipulate behavior-relevant neurons selectively in the primary motor cortex (M1). We find that the degree of M1 engram neuron reactivation correlates with motor performance. We further demonstrate that learning-induced dendritic spine reorganization specifically occurs in these M1 engram neurons. In addition, we find that motor learning leads to an increase in the strength of M1 engram neuron outputs onto striatal spiny projection neurons (SPNs) and that these synapses form clusters along SPN dendrites. These results identify a highly specific synaptic plasticity during the formation of long-lasting motor memory traces in the corticostriatal circuit.
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