自然灵巧飞行中蝙蝠运动皮层的高维群体编码
自然灵巧飞行中蝙蝠运动皮层的高维群体编码
作者： 小柯机器人 发布时间：2026/10/21 21:39:21
本期文章：《细胞》：Online/在线发表
美国加州大学伯克利分校Boaz Styr等科学家在《细胞》发表研究，揭示了自然灵巧飞行中蝙蝠运动皮层的高维群体编码。
阐明自然复杂运动背后的神经计算仍是神经科学的一项根本挑战。蝙蝠飞行提出了艰巨的运动控制难题，需要手样翅膀的许多自由度被精确协调，以实现快速三维机动。在此，研究人员对自由飞行蝙蝠的翅膀运动皮层进行了大规模无线记录，并结合翅膀运动学的三维追踪。尽管飞行控制十分复杂，蝙蝠仍通过精确调整单个翅膀拍动，反复执行准确的飞行。出乎意料的是，运动皮层活动并不由翅膀拍动周期主导。相反，神经元呈稀疏活动，对飞行运动学表现出混合选择性，并以可变的方式与翅膀拍动相位锁相，达到毫秒级精度。这产生了一种高维群体编码，由连续的翅膀拍动驱动，占据不同的神经状态。这些发现揭示了一种在自然灵巧运动中表达的运动皮层群体动力学模式，而来自受限范式的主流观点未能很好地捕捉这一模式。
附：英文原文
Title: A high-dimensional population code in the bat motor cortex during natural dexterous flight
Author: Boaz Styr, Kevin K. Qi, Xing Chen, William A. Liberti, Michael M. Yartsev
Issue&Volume: 2026-10-13
Abstract: Elucidating the neural computations underlying natural, complex movement remains a fundamental challenge in neuroscience. Bat flight presents a formidable motor control challenge, requiring hand-like wings whose many degrees of freedom must be precisely coordinated to enable rapid three-dimensional (3D) maneuvers. Here, we performed large-scale wireless recordings from the wing motor cortex of freely flying bats, combined with 3D tracking of wing kinematics. Despite the complexity of flight control, bats repeatedly executed accurate flights through precise adjustments of individual wingbeats. Surprisingly, motor cortical activity was not dominated by the wingbeat cycle. Instead, neurons were sparsely active, exhibiting mixed selectivity for flight kinematics and variable entrainment to the wingbeat phase reaching millisecond-scale precision. This yielded a high-dimensional population code driven by successive wingbeats occupying distinct neural states. These findings reveal a mode of motor cortical population dynamics expressed during natural dexterous movement that is not well captured by prevailing views derived from constrained paradigms.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2026.09.029
Source: https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(26)01131-1