Summary: A new study sheds light on how neurons in the motor cortex communicate with muscles and drive motion. Using optogenetics, the researchers discovered the motor cortex communicates with muscles differently, depending on the type of movement an animal makes.

Source: Zuckerman Institute.

Study in mice answers long-standing scientific question about the brain’s ability to drive movement.

New research by Columbia scientists offers fresh insight into how the brain tells the body to move, from simple behaviors like walking, to trained movements that may take years to master. The discovery in mice advances knowledge of how cells in the motor cortex — the brain’s movement center — communicate with muscles, and may help researchers better understand what happens in injury or disease, when the mechanisms that underlie movement go awry.

These findings were reported today in Neuron.

“All movements, from the most…