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High-gamma coupling between and within human pre- and primary motor cortex during movements

Xiang Liao1*, Gerwin Schalk2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Kai J. Miller7, Peter Brunner2, 3, Jeffrey G. Ojemann8, Ad Aertsen1 and Carsten Mehring1, 9, 10
  • 1 Bernstein Center Freiburg, University of Freiburg, Germany
  • 2 Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, Brain–Computer Interface R&D Program, United States
  • 3 Albany Medical College, Department of Neurology, United States
  • 4 Washington University School of Medicine, Department of Neurosurgery, United States
  • 5 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Biomedical Engineering, United States
  • 6 State University of New York at Albany, Department of Biomedical Sciences, School of Public Health, United States
  • 7 University of Washington, Department of Physics, United States
  • 8 University of Washington, Department of Neurological Surgery, United States
  • 9 Imperial College London, Department of Bioengineering, United Kingdom
  • 10 Imperial College London, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, United Kingdom

In this study, we investigated neuronal interactions between pre- and primary cortical motor areas and their information about movements by analyzing partial directed coherence (PDC) and phase locking values (PLV) of high-gamma (80-200Hz) electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals recordings in humans during visually cued and self-paced motor tasks.

Five types of motor tasks were performed (each by 2-6 subjects): (1) cued individual finger flexion; (2) cued 8-directional center-out joystick movement; (3) cued brain-controlled 1D cursor movement based on motor imagery; (4) cued brain-controlled 1D cursor movement based on motor movements; (5) self-paced left/right joystick movements.

We computed the PDC to analyze the directional interactions of high-gamma activities between pre-motor cortex (PM) and primary motor cortex (M1). The PDC from PM to M1 increased briefly before and during the movements, consistently across all five motor tasks. Additionally, the involvement of different parts of dorsal and ventral PM depended on whether the task was cued or self-paced: for cued movements (1-4), we observed an increase in the PDC from dorsal pre-motor to primary motor cortex, while for self-paced movements (5), the most prominent observation was an increase in the PDC from ventral pre-motor cortex to primary motor cortex.

For movement tasks (1) and (5) we investigated the dependence of PM-M1 interaction on the movement type. To this end, we computed the PLV separately for index and little finger movements and separately for left/right joystick movements, and decoded the movement type from single-trial PLVs. On average, we found that the movement type could be inferred correctly from the PLVs in about 80% of the trials.

Our results indicate that the directed coherence patterns reflect information flow from pre- to primary motor cortex during different types of motor tasks, and the involvement of different parts of pre-motor cortex, depending on whether movements are externally cued or self-paced. Moreover, the high-gamma phase coupling between PM and M1 depends on the type of movement performed and could, therefore, potentially be used as a neuronal control signal for brain-machine interfaces.

Acknowledgements

German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01GQ0420 to BCCN and 01 GQ 0830 to BFNT (AA,CM)), US Army Research Office (W911NF-07-1-0415 (GS), W911NF-08-1-0216(GS)) and the NIH/NIBIB (EB006356 (GS) and EB00856 (GS))

Keywords: Directed coherence, ECoG, Motor Cortex, Neurotechnology and brain-machine interface, synchronization

Conference: BC11 : Computational Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Bernstein Conference & Neurex Annual Meeting 2011, Freiburg, Germany, 4 Oct - 6 Oct, 2011.

Presentation Type: Poster

Topic: neurotechnology and brain-machine interface (please use "neurotechnology and brain-machine interface" as keyword)

Citation: Liao X, Schalk G, Miller KJ, Brunner P, Ojemann JG, Aertsen A and Mehring C (2011). High-gamma coupling between and within human pre- and primary motor cortex during movements. Front. Comput. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: BC11 : Computational Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Bernstein Conference & Neurex Annual Meeting 2011. doi: 10.3389/conf.fncom.2011.53.00115

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Received: 23 Aug 2011; Published Online: 04 Oct 2011.

* Correspondence: Mr. Xiang Liao, Bernstein Center Freiburg, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, xiang.liao@cqu.edu.cn