Cortical Observation by Synchronous Multifocal Optical Sampling Reveals Widespread Population Encoding of Actions

To advance the measurement of distributed neuronal population representations of targeted motor actions on single trials, we developed an optical method (COSMOS) for tracking neural activity in a largely uncharacterized spatiotemporal regime. COSMOS allowed simultaneous recording of neural dynamics at ∼30 Hz from over a thousand near-cellular resolution neuronal sources spread across the entire dorsal neocortex of awake, behaving mice during a three-option lick-to-target task. We identified spatially distributed neuronal population representations spanning the dorsal cortex that precisely encoded ongoing motor actions on single trials. Neuronal correlations measured at video rate using unaveraged, whole-session data had localized spatial structure, whereas trial-averaged data exhibited widespread correlations. Separable modes of neural activity encoded history-guided motor plans, with similar population dynamics in individual areas throughout cortex. These initial experiments illustrate how COSMOS enables investigation of large-scale cortical dynamics and that information about motor actions is widely shared between areas, potentially underlying distributed computations. •COSMOS enables fast, synchronous recording of cortex-spanning neural dynamics•Distributed neural activity throughout cortex encodes targeted actions•Unaveraged, but not trial-averaged, activity correlations show local structure•Population dynamics encode history-guided motor plans similarly between areas Kauvar, Machado, et al. have developed a new method, COSMOS, to simultaneously record neural dynamics at ∼30 Hz from over a thousand near-cellular resolution neuronal sources spread across the entire dorsal neocortex of awake, behaving mice. With COSMOS, they observe cortex-spanning population encoding of actions during a three-option lick-to-target task.