Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Neural and Cognitive Engineering Group, Centre for Automation and Robotics, Spanish National Research Council, Arganda del Rey, Spain
Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States; Département de neurosciences, Faculté de médecine, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
Department of Neuroscience, Northwestern University, Chicago, United States; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, United States; Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Northwestern University, and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Chicago, United States
The spiking activity of populations of cortical neurons is well described by the dynamics of a small number of population-wide covariance patterns, whose activation we refer to as ‘latent dynamics’. These latent dynamics are largely driven by the same correlated synaptic currents across the circuit that determine the generation of local field potentials (LFPs). Yet, the relationship between latent dynamics and LFPs remains largely unexplored. Here, we characterised this relationship for three different regions of primate sensorimotor cortex during reaching. The correlation between latent dynamics and LFPs was frequency-dependent and varied across regions. However, for any given region, this relationship remained stable throughout the behaviour: in each of primary motor and premotor cortices, the LFP-latent dynamics correlation profile was remarkably similar between movement planning and execution. These robust associations between LFPs and neural population latent dynamics help bridge the wealth of studies reporting neural correlates of behaviour using either type of recordings.
