Exploration biases forelimb reaching strategies

Abstract

The brain can generate actions, such as reaching to a target, using different movement strategies. We investigate how such strategies are learned in a task where perched head-fixed mice learn to reach to an invisible target area from a set start position using a joystick. This can be achieved by learning to move in a specific direction or to a specific endpoint location. As mice learn to reach the target, they refine their variable joystick trajectories into controlled reaches, which depend on the sensorimotor cortex. We show that individual mice learned strategies biased to either direction- or endpoint-based movements. This endpoint/direction bias correlates with spatial directional variability with which the workspace was explored during training. Model-free reinforcement learning agents can generate both strategies with similar correlation between variability during training and learning bias. These results provide evidence that reinforcement of individual exploratory behavior during training biases the reaching strategies that mice learn.