Neurons in the Motor Cortex Are Broadly Tuned and Show

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Examlex · Accepted Answer

The Answer is Multi-electrode arrays are able to isolate single unit action potential activity over a relatively large area of tissue. As the direction of movement is coded by a population of neurons, a large number of neurons across an area of tissue was required. This allowed the investigators to monitor the activity of many neurons at one time. If the investigators had only monitored one neuron at a time they would have seen that any one neuron was active at some times but not others and the de-coding would have been very difficult. A local field potential monitors the synaptic activity in an area so this would have been very similar across many movement directions. The local field potential would not have shown different individual neurons active for particular movements.

Neurons in the Motor Cortex Are Broadly Tuned and Show

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