Multichannel recordings in dorsal and ventral premotor cortex during a reach-to-grasp task

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Multichannel recordings in dorsal and ventral premotor cortex during a reach-to-grasp task Sofie De Schrijver1, Elsie Premereur1, Thomas Decramer1 and Peter Janssen1* 1 KU Leuven, Belgium The premotor cortex is involved in visually guided motor behavior with the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) more implicated in reaching and the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) more involved in grasping. It has however been demonstrated recently that this functional specialization is not absolute. To gain more insights into the different roles of PMd and PMv and their potential efficacy to develop a novel visuomotor brain-machine interface (BMI), we studied both areas at the neuronal population level. To this end, we implanted two 96-channels Utah arrays in macaque ventral premotor area F5c and dorsal premotor area F2, and recorded multi-unit activity (MUA) while the monkey performed a reach-to-grasp task. To initiate a trial, the monkey had to position his hand on a resting position and fixate a round object that contained three spheres. After a brief fixation period (in an otherwise dark environment), an external light illuminated the object and a blue LED appeared on one of the spheres, signaling which sphere had to be grasped. The monkey had to maintain fixation and keep its hand in the resting position until the central green LED disappeared, indicating the monkey to reach to and grasp the target object. We recorded during 12 days from 128 channels pseudorandomly chosen from the 192 electrodes implanted in both areas, resulting in a total of 1120 channels in PMd and 1088 channels in PMv. We observed 2097 channels (PMd: 1054; PMv: 1043) with a significant task-related increase in MUA. On average, neuronal activity in PMd showed a strong increase in spike rate at object onset and remained elevated throughout the trial until the monkey executed the grasp movement. In contrast, the activity of PMv neurons stayed at baseline level and only sharply increased after movement onset. Furthermore, to make a distinction between neural specificity for reaching or grasping we calculated a reach-grasp index (comparing the activity after the lift of the hand with the activity around the pull of the object). This reach-grasp index differed significantly between dorsal (average index: 0.0153) and ventral premotor cortex (average index: -0.0193, ttest: p< 0.001), indicating a larger involvement of PMd in reaching and PMv in grasping. Finally, significantly positive best-worst indices (comparing the activity for the best condition versus the worst condition) for both areas (PMd: 0.0430, ttest; p< 0.001; PMv: 0.0281, ttest; p< 0.001) indicated direction selectivity. Taken together, we can conclude that the premotor cortex is characterized by a functional heterogeneity; with high visual responses in PMd, and more movement-related responses in the F5c sector of PMv. Although both areas encode reaching and grasping movements, PMd neurons show higher activity for reaching, whereas PMv neurons show higher activity during grasping. Our results have strong implications for novel BMIs based on visuomotor activity. Keywords: multielectrode array, premotor area, Macaque (macaca mulatto), reach, GRASP Conference: 13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience , Brussels, Belgium, 24 May - 24 May, 2019. Presentation Type: Poster presentation Topic: Behavioral/Systems Neuroscience Citation: De Schrijver S, Premereur E, Decramer T and Janssen P (2019). Multichannel recordings in dorsal and ventral premotor cortex during a reach-to-grasp task. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2019.96.00058 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 24 Apr 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Mx. Peter Janssen, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, peter.janssen@kuleuven.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Sofie De Schrijver Elsie Premereur Thomas Decramer Peter Janssen Google Sofie De Schrijver Elsie Premereur Thomas Decramer Peter Janssen Google Scholar Sofie De Schrijver Elsie Premereur Thomas Decramer Peter Janssen PubMed Sofie De Schrijver Elsie Premereur Thomas Decramer Peter Janssen Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.