Decoding Internally and Externally Driven Movement Plans

Abstract

During movement planning, brain activity within parietofrontal networks encodes information about upcoming actions that can be driven either externally (e.g., by a sensory cue) or internally (i.e., by a choice/decision). Here we used multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data to distinguish between areas that represent (1) abstract movement plans that generalize across the way in which these were driven, (2) internally driven movement plans, or (3) externally driven movement plans. In a delayed-movement paradigm, human volunteers were asked to plan and execute three types of nonvisually guided right-handed reaching movements toward a central target object: using a precision grip, a power grip, or touching the object without hand preshaping. On separate blocks of trials, movements were either instructed via color cues (Instructed condition), or chosen by the participant (Free-Choice condition). Using ROI-based and whole-brain searchlight-based MVPA, we found abstract representations of planned movements that generalize across the way these movements are selected (internally vs externally driven) in parietal cortex, dorsal premotor cortex, and primary motor cortex contralateral to the acting hand. In addition, we revealed representations specific for internally driven movement plans in contralateral ventral premotor cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, supramarginal gyrus, and in ipsilateral posterior parietotemporal regions, suggesting that these regions are recruited during movement selection. Finally, we observed representations of externally driven movement plans in bilateral supplementary motor cortex and a similar trend in presupplementary motor cortex, suggesting a role in stimulus-response mapping.

Dorsal Premotor Cortex Involved in Hand Gesture Preparation in Macaques

“…This result illustrated that the selective neuron firing mode of PMd is highly correlated with the gestures movement preparation from another side. This result was coincided with fMRI result of human being (Ariani et al, 2015).…”

“…However, there were also researchers reported that PMd had the function of linked between decision making and action (Svoboda et al, 2017;Churchland et al, 2006;Roitman et al, 2002). In addition, some scholars demonstrated that the function of PMd was related to the abstract movement (Kaufman, 2015;Ariani et al, 2015). We can clear see that the changes in the number of selective units ( Figure 5) and decoding results ( Figure 6) showed that PMd quickly chose the final gesture and kept it in motion in Instructed condition.…”

“…Furthermore, in the Instructed condition, the monkeys face only red LED or only greed LED during the Cue period, and the monkeys face the red and green LED under the Free-Chosen condition. Therefore, if PMd responded to visual stimuli, there should be some neurons in the Cue period that showed selectivity only in Instructed conditions and showed no selectivity in Free-Chosen conditions (Ariani et al, 2015). However, in Table 2 we could hardly observe such units, so we think that these selectivity units of PMd might participate in internally driven gesture planning.…”

Enhancing Gesture Decoding Performance Using Signals from Posterior Parietal Cortex: A Stereo-Electroencephalograhy (SEEG) Study

“…First, the hand shape selective area may indeed occupy a small area of PPC, most likely AIP. Although several fMRI studies indicate the hand shape selective area includes beyond AIP such as SMG, the whole IPS, and SPL (Fabbri et al, 2016;Króliczak et al, 2016;Ariani et al, 2015), AIP is consistently found to take part in the special encoding of hand shape Binkofski et al, 1998;Klaes et al, 2015), which has been demonstrated in this work as well ( figure 3). Therefore, since SEEG electrodes are randomly distributed within the whole PPC, it is reasonable that only a small percentage of them presented gesture selective.…”

A preliminary study of longitudinal neuroadaptation associated with recovery from addiction

“…However, we cannot exclude the possibility that this is a learning effect, unrelated to substance use recovery. A longitudinal increase in the Redeem*p(Explode) parametric modulator was also noted in dorsal premotor cortex, consistent with greater internally-guided motor planning (Ariani and Wurm, 2015) during safe responses in association with elevated risk/reward.…”