Spiking Codes for Skilled Motor Control

By analyzing single-unit recordings from neurons and muscle fibers during complex behaviors in songbirds (and, more recently, rodents), we examine how the brain regulates precisely-timed spike patterns to control agile behavior.

Millisecond-scale motor coding precedes sensorimotor learning in songbirds
Leila May M. Pascual, Aanya Vusirikala, Ilya M. Nemenman, Samuel J. Sober, Michael Pasek. BioArXiv 2024.09.27.615500 (2025) [PDF] [DOI]

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An output-null signature of inertial load in motor cortex
Kirk EA, Hope KT, Sober SJ, Sauerbrei BA. Nat Commun 15, 7309 (2024) [PDF] [DOI]

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Unsupervised Bayesian Ising Approximation for decoding neural activity and other biological dictionaries
Hernández DG, Sober SJ, Nemenman I. eLife 11:e68192 (2022) [PDF] [DOI]

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Millisecond Spike Timing Codes for Motor Control (review article)
Sober SJ, Sponberg S, Nemenman I, Ting LH. Trends in Neuroscience Oct;41(10):644-648 (2018) [PDF]

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Motor control by precisely timed spike patterns
Srivastava K, Holmes CM, Vellema M, Pack A, Elemans C, Nemenman I, Sober SJ. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(5):1171-1176 (2017) [PDF]

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Millisecond-Scale Motor Encoding in a Cortical Vocal Area
Tang C, Srivastava K, Chehayeb D, Nemenman I, and Sober SJ. PLoS Biology DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002018 (2014) [PDF] [DOI]

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