A high-dimensional population code in the bat motor cortex during natural dexterous flight.

High-dimensional neural population code in bat motor cortex encodes natural flight kinematics with millisecond precision.

• Why it matters: Understanding how the brain controls complex, natural movements like flight is a key challenge in neuroscience, especially given the limitations of traditional experimental paradigms.
• What they did: Researchers conducted large-scale wireless recordings from the wing motor cortex of freely flying bats and combined these with 3D wing kinematic tracking, analyzing neural activity during natural flight.
• The result: They found neurons exhibited mixed selectivity and entrainment to wingbeat phases, forming a high-dimensional population code that occupies distinct neural states across wingbeats, revealing a novel mode of motor cortical dynamics.