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Tudor Dragoi

@dragoitudor.bsky.social

Neuroscience PhD Candidate in the Economo lab at Boston Univ. studying how the brain controls movement | previously Mriganka Sur Lab | Brandeis Univ.

Posts Replies Media

Reposted by Tudor Dragoi

Brian DePasquale @briandepasquale.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

🚨 New preprint from the lab! 🚨 We introduce BiXformer, a bidirectional cross-attention transformer for disentangling inter-regional neural dynamics. Recordings from multiple regions superimpose feedforward & feedback signals 🔁, offset in time, making it difficult to tease these signals apart. 🧠 🔁

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

10/ Many thanks to the whole team (Zachary Loschinskey, Munib Hasnain, @briandepasquale.bsky.social, @mikeeconomo.bsky.social) who made this work possible!

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

9/ Takeaway: Together these results point to a previously unrecognized, fast timescale layer of flexibility in motor control and provide a framework for tracking how cortical circuits dynamically govern behavior as demands evolve.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

8/ Takeaway: When future actions and/or their sensory consequences are unpredictable, the cortex stays engaged to monitor and guide movement. We describe how this may represent an instantiation of a sensorimotor form of attention.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

7/ During learning, engagement is initially prolonged under high uncertainty and sharpens into transient engagement as animals learn how a task is structured and uncertainty falls.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

6/ Using a task in which animals are rewarded optogenetically, we demonstrate that engagement does not reflect a motivated or reward related state – but is sensitive to sensorimotor uncertainty specifically.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

5/ Crucially, whether engagement persists depends on the contextual demands of the movement: cortical engagement is sustained when animals are uncertain about upcoming events, such as the delivery of a reward, and it dissipates when outcomes become predictable.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

4/ When the motor cortex is engaged, population spike rates are elevated and necessary for initiating and precisely controlling movement kinematics. Remarkably, the cortex can rapidly disengage on sub-second timescales even as movement continues in a smooth, uninterrupted manner.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

3/ Using multi-site population recordings, optogenetics, statistical modeling of neural state transitions, and tightly controlled behavioral tasks, we found that cortical control can switch between “engaged” and “disengaged” states during a single continuous movement.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

2/ Further, it’s unclear whether cortical involvement is fixed during movement or can toggle on and off within an action.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

1/ Many studies have shown that the motor cortex can be essential for some movements but dispensable for others, and its role can change with learning. As a result, when exactly the motor cortex contributes to movement has been difficult to predict, control, and formalize.

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Tudor Dragoi @dragoitudor.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Very excited to share a new preprint - my first paper in the @mikeeconomo.bsky.social lab where we asked when and why the motor cortex is recruited for movement control:🧠👇https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.13.699314v1

biorxiv.org

Dynamic engagement of the motor cortex in controlling movement

Neural circuits do not contribute equally or continuously to behavior. In mice, the motor cortex can be essential or dispensable for movement in different contexts, but how it is dynamically recruited...

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