# Neural circuits underlying the acquisition and control of motor skills

> **NIH NIH R01** · HARVARD UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $422,500

## Abstract

Neural circuits underlying the acquisition and control of motor skills
Much of our behavioral repertoire consists of learned motor skills, yet little is known about the neural circuits underlying
their acquisition and control. The overarching goals of our research program is to identify these circuits, delineate their
respective functions, and explain the logic by which they work together to implement motor skill learning and execution.
To work towards this goal, we developed cutting-edge experimental infrastructure designed to enable high-throughout
and rigorous studies of complex learned behaviors in rodents. To facilitate the study of learned motor skills, we developed
a task that train rats to produce task-specific movement patterns with complex learned movement kinematics. In previous
work, we showed that motor cortex is necessary for learning these skills, but not for executing them once acquired. These
surprising results suggest that, while motor cortex has a function in learning, the acquired skills are stored and generated
subcortically. We further showed that the sensorimotor input region of the basal ganglia, the dorsolateral striatum,
encodes the kinematic details of the learned motor skills and is essential for generating them. Here, we build on these
results to examine the logic and mechanisms by which subcortical circuits, specifically the striatum and thalamus,
contribute to acquiring, storing, and generating these skills. To get at this, we will use our innovative experimental
platform to monitor neural activity and behavior continuously over weeks of training, while also perturbing neural activity
and observe the effects of these manipulations on behavior. We will describe how striatal encoding of task-related
movement patterns changes with learning and how these changes relate to a striatum’s putative control function (Aim 1).
We will further parse the pathways from thalamus to striatum that are relevant for motor skill execution (Aim 2) and
describe task-related activity patterns in the thalamus and how they are transformed in the striatum (Aim 3). Precise
measurement of the rats’ movements using video-based motion tracking will relate our neural recordings and circuit
manipulations to behavior in exact ways, allowing us to infer how subcortical circuits implement the acquisition and
execution of learned skills. Addressing these aims will clarify the logic of how the mammalian motor system enables motor
skill learning and execution and delineate the roles of the basal ganglia and thalamus in these important processes, thus
addressing fundamental questions in neuroscience with far-reaching implications for clinical practice and
neurorehabilitation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10521433
- **Project number:** 2R01NS099323-06A1
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Bence P Olveczky
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $422,500
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2016-09-01 → 2027-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10521433

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10521433, Neural circuits underlying the acquisition and control of motor skills (2R01NS099323-06A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10521433. Licensed CC0.

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