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Citation |
Kaplan HS, Zimmer M. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 2020; 64: 60-69. |
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Affiliation |
Department of Neuroscience and Developmental Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria; Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Campus-Vienna-Biocenter 1, 1030 Vienna, Austria. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
32203874 |
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Abstract |
Recent neuronal activity recordings of unprecedented breadth and depth in worms, flies, and mice have uncovered a surprising common feature: brain-wide behavior-related signals. These signals pervade, and even dominate, neuronal populations thought to function primarily in sensory processing. Such convergent findings across organisms suggest that brain-wide representations of behavior might be a universal neuroscientific principle. What purpose(s) do these representations serve? Here we review these findings along with suggested functions, including sensory prediction, context-dependent sensory processing, and, perhaps most speculatively, distributed motor command generation. It appears that a large proportion of the brain's energy and coding capacity is used to represent ongoing behavior; understanding the function of these representations should therefore be a major goal in neuroscience research. Language: en |