Motor Cortex Shown To Play Active Role In Learning Movement Patterns

Sunday, May 4, 2014 - 17:20 in Psychology & Sociology

Skilled motor movements of the sort tennis players employ while serving a tennis ball or pianists use in playing a concerto, require precise interactions between the motor cortex and the rest of the brain. Neuroscientists had long assumed that the motor cortex functioned something like a piano keyboard. "Every time you wanted to hear a specific note, there was a specific key to press," says Andrew Peters, a neurobiologist at UC San Diego's Center for Neural Circuits and Behavior. "In other words, every specific movement of a muscle required the activation of specific cells in the motor cortex because the main job of the motor cortex was thought to be to listen to the rest of the cortex and press the keys it's directed to press." read more

Read the whole article on

More from

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net