Neurocientista alemão ministra palestra na FM
No dia 23 de abril de 2018, às 11 horas, o neurocientista alemão Michael Brecht, professor da Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience e da Humboldt University, ministrará a palestra “Neural coding and movement suppression in the motor system”, no auditório do Instituto de Radiologia (InRad) na Faculdade de Medicina.
Resumo
Neural coding and movement suppression in the motor systemThe motor cortex is a large frontal structure in the cerebral cortex of eutherian mammals. A vast array of evidence implicates the motor cortex in the volitional control of motor output. But how does the motor cortex exert this ‘control’? Historically, thought about motor cortex has been shaped by the discovery of cortical ‘motor maps’, i.e. ordered representations of stimulation-evoked movements in anaesthetized animals. However, volitional control not only entails the initiation of movements, but also the ability to suppress undesired movements and behave in a non-reflexive fashion. In my lecture, I highlight classic and recent findings, which emphasize that motor cortex neurons not only initiate movement, but also contribute strongly to movement suppression. Motor cortical stimulation in awake subjects often leads to movement arrest and motor cortical inactivation often disinhibits movement, which is normally suppressed. Similarly, there is an unusual predominance of suppression of motor cortical population activity during movement and an increase of motor cortical activity in tasks, which require the withholding of motor output. Thus, stimulation, recording and inactivation studies suggest that motor cortex – at least in some instances – exerts a negative control of movement. This type of control is rather different from the representation in sensory cortices, where sensory stimuli almost invariably drive population firing rate increases and sensations. Action suppression is critical for the strategic planning of behavior and numerous observations suggest that motor cortical activity contributes heavily to this important and understudied cognitive ability.
CV do conferencista: http://www.dfg.de/en/funded_
