Abstract:

Our ability to sequence movements and actions in response to unpredictable environmental events underlies our rich and adaptive behavioral repertoire. Such flexible behaviors contrast with overtrained, or automatic, motor sequences directed at specific tasks and executed the same way every time. We probed how neural circuits underlie these distinct forms of motor sequence execution by training rats on a 'piano task' in which the same motor sequence can be generated in response to unpredictable cues or overtrained to the point of automaticity. By measuring and manipulating neural activity in motor cortex and sensorimotor striatum, we delineate the logic by which these circuits combine to generate both flexible and automatic motor sequences.