Abstract
The basal ganglia are known to be involved in the planning, execution and control of gripping force and movement vigour. Here we aim to define the nature of the basal ganglia control signal for force and to decode gripping force based on local field potential (LFP) activities recorded from the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in patients with deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes. We found that STN LFP activities in the gamma (55-90 Hz) and beta (13-30m Hz) bands were most informative about gripping force, and that a first order dynamic linear model with these STN LFP features as inputs can be used to decode the temporal profile of gripping force. Our results enhance the understanding of how the basal ganglia control gripping force, and also suggest that deep brain LFPs could potentially be used to decode movement parameters related to force and movement vigour for the development of advanced human-machine interfaces.
Highlights
Accurate control of grip force is essential in the manipulation of objects in everyday life
We demonstrate that the local field potential (LFP) signals recorded from the STN region (STNr), which is a target of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders such as the Parkinson’s disease, can be used to decode the gripping force made by the contralateral hand
Our findings suggest that the subthalamic nucleus (STN) LFP could provide a high-performance control signal for brain machine interfaces (BMI) driven neuroprosthetic grasping in paralysed patients, leveraging advances in surgery for deep brain stimulation which has become a relatively safe procedure (Larson, 2014)
Summary
Accurate control of grip force is essential in the manipulation of objects in everyday life. The results of studies aimed to decode force based on cortical neural activity are still far from consistent and satisfactory, and no BMI user has yet achieved manipulation of the force generated by a robotic hand (Velliste et al, 2008; Collinger et al, 2013), or the control of the simulated grasp force used for a virtual object (Bensmaia and Miller, 2014). Neuronal recordings in monkeys and imaging studies in healthy humans have suggested that the basal ganglia play an important role in the control of the scaling of motor responses (DeLong et al, 1984; Turner and Anderson, 1997; Spraker et al, 2007; Vaillancourt et al, 2007). Direct recordings from basal ganglia targets in patients suggest that changes in frequency specific activities in the local field potential (LFP) contribute to the selection of effort or force levels for voluntary movements. The power over the gamma band (60–80 Hz) in the LFP in the globus pallidus correlates with the movement amplitude and velocity of the contralateral hand of patients with cranial dystonia
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