Science Magazine reporting Carl Petersen's research
Carl Petersen's Lab of Sensory Processing just published a paper on Motor Control by Sensory Cortex in the November 26 issue of Science Magazine.
In this paper, Carl Petersen's group has investigated the sensory cortex and demonstrated that this area of the cortex is required to drive retraction of whiskers in mice. This is important, because it shows that it is not just the motor cortex that can drive movement, but also the sensory cortex. Thus the motor and sensory cortices have closely associated functions. Perhaps, it is best not to parcel these two areas into sensory and motor cortex but to actually consider them as an integrated 'sensorimotor' cortex that is capable of sensory processing as well as motor control. In reaching these conclusions, a combination of intracortical microstimulation and the recently developed technique of optogenetics in the awake head-fixed mouse have been used.
Paper ref. is "Matyas F, Sreenivasan V, Marbach F, Wacongne C, Barsy B, Mateo C, Aronoff R, Petersen CCH (2010) Motor control by sensory cortex. Science 330: 1240-1243. "