The Contribution of Premotor Cortico-Striatal Projections to the Execution of Serial Order Sequences

Striatal activity is necessary to initiate and execute sequences of actions. The main excitatory input to the striatum comes from the cortex. While it is hypothesized that motor and premotor cortico-striatal projections are important to guide striatal activity during the execution of sequences of actions, technical limitations have made this challenging to address. Here, we implemented a task in mice that allows for the study of different moments to execute a serial order sequence consisting of two subsequences of actions. Using this task, we performed electrophysiological recordings in the premotor (M2) and primary motor (M1) cortices, and state-dependent optogenetic inhibitions of their cortico-striatal projections. We show that while both M2 and M1 contain activity modulations related to the execution of self-paced sequences, mainly, the premotor cortico-striatal projections contribute to the proper execution/structuring of these sequences.