Neural Coding of Movement Direction in the Healthy Human Brain

Cowper-Smith, Christopher D.; Lau, Esther Yuet Ying; Helmick, Carl; Eskes, Gail A.; Westwood, David A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013330

Cited by 21 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…horizontal and vertical, axes of orientation (0°/180° and 90°/270°). The findings of the present study are in accordance with previous studies using single-cell recordings in non-human primates in which neurons and populations of neurons in M1 were found to be directionally tuned [8], [15], [28], [30], [31] in a spatially segregated pattern [29] as well as recent fMRI studies investigating neuronal representation of direction in humans [32], [33]. Therefore, our finding of direction-related activation in the human M1 hand-area extends the concept of M1 functions: aside from a somatotopically arranged effector system, M1 is also involved in higher-order information processing.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Direction of Movement Is Encoded in the Human Primary Motor Cortex

et al. 2011

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The present study investigated how direction of hand movement, which is a well-described parameter in cerebral organization of motor control, is incorporated in the somatotopic representation of the manual effector system in the human primary motor cortex (M1). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a manual step-tracking task we found that activation patterns related to movement in different directions were spatially disjoint within the representation area of the hand on M1. Foci of activation related to specific movement directions were segregated within the M1 hand area; activation related to direction 0° (right) was located most laterally/superficially, whereas directions 180° (left) and 270° (down) elicited activation more medially within the hand area. Activation related to direction 90° was located between the other directions. Moreover, by investigating differences between activations related to movement along the horizontal (0°+180°) and vertical (90°+270°) axis, we found that activation related to the horizontal axis was located more anterolaterally/dorsally in M1 than for the vertical axis, supporting that activations related to individual movement directions are direction- and not muscle related. Our results of spatially segregated direction-related activations in M1 are in accordance with findings of recent fMRI studies on neural encoding of direction in human M1. Our results thus provide further evidence for a direct link between direction as an organizational principle in sensorimotor transformation and movement execution coded by effector representations in M1.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Direction of Movement Is Encoded in the Human Primary Motor Cortex

et al. 2011

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“…In the context of the center-out IOR task adopted presently, our fMRI results predict that neural adaptation will occur in the 0° and 180° spatial offset conditions, because both conditions require the repetition of a recently completed movement – either a repetition of the movement to the first target, or a repetition of the opposite, return-to-center movement. Given the relatively narrow tuning function for adaptation in most neurons (i.e., where movements offset by 90° show little to no adaptation) [26]–[28], our fMRI results predict that neural adaptation will be minimal for 90° offset conditions because the second target response is 90° away from both the first target movement and the return-to-center movement. Assuming that adaptation effects revealed by fMRI are associated with decreased neural firing rates and therefore processing efficiency (e.g., where it takes longer to reach response threshold), one would predict an increased response latency for conditions associated with the presence of adaptation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Notably, adaptation only occurred for consecutive responses offset by 0° (i.e. when movements were made in the same direction), while a spatial offset of 90° or 180° between repeated movements did not reveal adaptation [26]. In the context of the center-out IOR task adopted presently, our fMRI results predict that neural adaptation will occur in the 0° and 180° spatial offset conditions, because both conditions require the repetition of a recently completed movement – either a repetition of the movement to the first target, or a repetition of the opposite, return-to-center movement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Spatial Interactions between Successive Eye and Arm Movements: Signal Type Matters

et al. 2013

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Spatial interactions between consecutive movements are often attributed to inhibition of return (IOR), a phenomenon in which responses to previously signalled locations are slower than responses to unsignalled locations. In two experiments using peripheral target signals offset by 0°, 90°, or 180°, we show that consecutive saccadic (Experiment 1) and reaching (Experiment 3) responses exhibit a monotonic pattern of reaction times consistent with the currently established spatial distribution of IOR. In contrast, in two experiments with central target signals (i.e., arrowheads pointing at target locations), we find a non-monotonic pattern of reaction times for saccades (Experiment 2) and reaching movements (Experiment 4). The difference in the patterns of results observed demonstrates different behavioral effects that depend on signal type. The pattern of results observed for central stimuli are consistent with a model in which neural adaptation is occurring within motor networks encoding movement direction in a distributed manner.

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“…On the basis of this assumption, planned movements can be amazingly accurately and robustly be decoded from neural signals in monkeys (Schwartz 1994). Directional coding of movements seems also to occur in humans (Cowper-Smith et al 2010, Fabbri et al 2010). Brain-machine interfaces can quite successfully exploit decoding of intended movement directions for steering machines or prostheses with brain signals, both in monkeys (Taylor, Tillery & Schwartz 2002) as well as in humans (Milekovic et al 2012, Hochberg et al 2012.…”

Section: Backward Movementsmentioning

confidence: 96%

There and back again: Putting the vectorial movement planning hypothesis to a critical test

Kobak

Oliveira

2013

Preprint

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There and back again: Putting the vectorial movement planning hypothesis to a critical testBased on psychophysical evidence about how learning of visuomotor transformation generalizes, it has been suggested that movements are planned on the basis of movement direction and magnitude, i.e. the vector connecting movement origin and targets. This notion is also known under the term "vectorial planning hypothesis". Previous psychophysical studies, however, have included separate areas of the workspace for training movements and testing the learning. This study eliminates this confounding factor by investigating the transfer of learning from forward to backward movements in a center-out-and-back task, in which the workspace for both movements is completely identical. Visual feedback allowed for learning only during movements towards the target (forward movements) and not while moving back to the origin (backward movements). When subjects learned the visuomotor rotation in forward movements, initial directional errors in backward movements also decreased to some degree. This learning effect in backward movements occurred predominantly when backward movements featured the same movement directions as the ones trained in forward movements (i.e., when opposite targets were presented). This suggests that learning was transferred in a direction specific way, supporting the notion that movement direction is the most prominent parameter used for motor planning.PeerJ PrePrints | https://peerj.com/preprints/114v1/ | v1 received:

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Neural Coding of Movement Direction in the Healthy Human Brain

Cited by 21 publications

References 36 publications

Direction of Movement Is Encoded in the Human Primary Motor Cortex

Direction of Movement Is Encoded in the Human Primary Motor Cortex

Spatial Interactions between Successive Eye and Arm Movements: Signal Type Matters

There and back again: Putting the vectorial movement planning hypothesis to a critical test

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