A shared cortical manifold links sensory error to motor planning

Abstract

The ability to detect and correct errors is central to learning and executing skilled behaviors such as speech and musical performance. Accordingly, sensory and motor regions of the brain must communicate and coordinate their activity in order to both detect errors and adapt in response to them. However, the neural mechanisms by which sensory feedback is transformed into updated motor plans across distributed cortical circuits remain unclear. Here, we identify how the mouse brain encodes error signals during a skilled acoustic task and how these signals guide motor adaptation. We developed a novel, sound-dependent behavior in which mice use real-time auditory feedback to adjust ongoing forelimb movements. Task performance critically depends on auditory cortex, where neurons encode error-related feedback that predicts both within-trial and across-trial behavioral adaptations. Acoustic error feedback alters secondary motor cortex (M2) dynamics, selectively pushing activity along dimensions that encode planning signals for upcoming movements. Notably, auditory cortex and M2 share a low-dimensional manifold that emerges only after learning the skilled behavior. This shared geometry is not engaged during simpler forelimb tasks, suggesting that it reflects a learned, context-dependent solution for coordinating distributed cortical activity. In trained mice, silencing auditory cortex disrupts M2 dynamics, consistent with a model of continuously coupled cortical interactions during skilled performance. Together, these findings identify a learned coordinate transformation that maps sensory error onto corrective motor plans. More broadly, they point to a candidate general principle for how learning can establish a shared cortical manifold that links distant brain regions, enabling sensory feedback to selectively reshape future actions and support flexible, goal-directed control.