Neural populations in the dorsal and ventral cervical spinal cord share temporal dynamics during reach

Authors

Smith, T., Egawa, S., Kosugi, A., Maeda, K., Sugai, c., Yaron, A., Seki, K.

Abstract

Neural population dynamics provide a popular framework for studying motor cortex function. However, whether such dynamics reflect stage-specific computations or are shared across the input and output stages of a sensorimotor circuit is unknown. In the spinal cord, afferent inputs and motor outputs are segregated by anatomical depth. Here we developed depth-resolved Neuropixels recordings from the rat cervical spinal cord during targeted reaching behavior. Across our recordings, population activity was low-dimensional and organized into transient, rotational and target-specific dynamical motifs. Despite differences in single-neuron activity by depth, dorsal and ventral populations expressed nearly identical dynamics across targets and animals. The dominant target-invariant component was strikingly synchronized across depths, whereas other components, including the target-specific component, showed condition-dependent ventral-to-dorsal delays with timing consistent with movement-related feedback. Thus, cervical spinal population dynamics span sensory and motor territories, and may reflect shared coordination of activity rather than purely state-specific local processing.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 20 Oct 2026.

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