The role of the cerebellum in predictive motor control and coordination has been thoroughly studied during movements of a single body part. In the real world, however, actions are often more complex. Here, we show that a small area in the rostral anterior interpositus nucleus (rAIN) of the mouse cerebellum is responsible for generating a predictive motor synergy that serves to protect the eye by precisely coordinating muscles of the eyelid, neck, and forelimb. Within the rAIN region, we discovered a new functional category of neurons with unique properties specialized for control of motor synergies. These neurons integrated inhibitory cutaneous inputs from multiple parts of the body, and their activity was correlated with the vigor of the defensive motor synergy on a trial-by-trial basis. We propose that some regions of the cerebellum are organized in poly-somatotopic “action maps” to reduce dimensionality and simplify motor control during ethologically relevant behaviors.

小脑在预测运动控制和协调中的作用已经在单个身体部位的运动过程中进行了深入研究。然而，在现实世界中，动作往往更复杂。在这里，我们展示了小鼠小脑喙前中间核 (rAIN) 中的一小块区域负责产生预测运动协同作用，通过精确协调眼睑、颈部和前肢的肌肉来保护眼睛。在 rAIN 区域内，我们发现了一种新的神经元功能类别，具有专门用于控制运动协同作用的独特特性。这些神经元整合了来自身体多个部位的抑制性皮肤输入，并且它们的活动与防御性运动协同作用的活力在逐次试验的基础上相关联。