Movements during sleep reveal the developmental emergence of a cerebellar-dependent internal model in motor thalamus

Dooley et al. from Mark Blumberg’s lab at the University of Iowa examined movement-related activity in ventral lateral (VL) and ventral posterior (VP) thalamic nuclei, as well as primary motor cortex (M1) in postnatal rats, ages P12, P16 and P20. They implanted NeuroNexus probes A1x16-3mm-100-177, A1x16-10mm-100-177, or A2x16-10mm-50-500-177 and recorded single units and twitches. They demonstrate that a cerebellar internal model of movement arises at P20.