A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion
The joint activity of neural populations is high dimensional and complex. One strategy for reaching a tractable understanding of circuit function is to seek the simplest dynamical system that can account for the population activity. By imaging Aplysia’s pedal ganglion during fictive locomotion, here...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
eLife Sciences Publications
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53577/ |
| _version_ | 1848798959964782592 |
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| author | Bruno, Angela M. Frost, William N. Humphries, Mark D. |
| author_facet | Bruno, Angela M. Frost, William N. Humphries, Mark D. |
| author_sort | Bruno, Angela M. |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | The joint activity of neural populations is high dimensional and complex. One strategy for reaching a tractable understanding of circuit function is to seek the simplest dynamical system that can account for the population activity. By imaging Aplysia’s pedal ganglion during fictive locomotion, here we show that its population wide activity arises from a low-dimensional spiral attractor. Evoking locomotion moved the population into a low-dimensional, periodic, decaying orbit - a spiral – in which it behaved as a true attractor, converging to the same orbit when evoked, and returning to that orbit after transient perturbation. We found the same attractor in every preparation, and could predict motor output directly from its orbit, yet individual neurons’ participation changed across consecutive locomotion bouts. From these results, we propose that only the low-dimensional dynamics for movement control, and not the high-dimensional population activity, are consistent within and between nervous systems. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:28:04Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-53577 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:28:04Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | eLife Sciences Publications |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-535772018-08-31T10:02:51Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53577/ A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion Bruno, Angela M. Frost, William N. Humphries, Mark D. The joint activity of neural populations is high dimensional and complex. One strategy for reaching a tractable understanding of circuit function is to seek the simplest dynamical system that can account for the population activity. By imaging Aplysia’s pedal ganglion during fictive locomotion, here we show that its population wide activity arises from a low-dimensional spiral attractor. Evoking locomotion moved the population into a low-dimensional, periodic, decaying orbit - a spiral – in which it behaved as a true attractor, converging to the same orbit when evoked, and returning to that orbit after transient perturbation. We found the same attractor in every preparation, and could predict motor output directly from its orbit, yet individual neurons’ participation changed across consecutive locomotion bouts. From these results, we propose that only the low-dimensional dynamics for movement control, and not the high-dimensional population activity, are consistent within and between nervous systems. eLife Sciences Publications 2017-08-07 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en cc_by https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53577/1/Attractor_MotorProgramme_ELife_RevisionDraft3pt1.pdf Bruno, Angela M., Frost, William N. and Humphries, Mark D. (2017) A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion. eLife, 6 . e27342. ISSN 2050-084X http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/elife.27342 doi:10.7554/elife.27342 doi:10.7554/elife.27342 |
| spellingShingle | Bruno, Angela M. Frost, William N. Humphries, Mark D. A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion |
| title | A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion |
| title_full | A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion |
| title_fullStr | A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion |
| title_full_unstemmed | A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion |
| title_short | A spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion |
| title_sort | spiral attractor network drives rhythmic locomotion |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53577/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53577/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53577/ |