Abstract
Movements overtly sample sensory information, making sensory analysis an active-sensing process. In this study, we show that visual information sampling is not just locked to the (overt) movement dynamics but to the internal (covert) dynamics of cortico-motor control. We asked human participants to perform continuous isometric contraction while detecting unrelated and unpredictable near-threshold visual stimuli. The motor output (force) shows zero-lag coherence with brain activity (recorded via electroencephalography) in the beta-band, as previously reported. In contrast, cortical rhythms in the alpha-band systematically forerun the motor output by 200 milliseconds. Importantly, visual detection is facilitated when cortico-motor alpha (not beta) synchronization is enhanced immediately before stimulus onset, namely, at the optimal phase relationship for sensorimotor communication. These findings demonstrate an ongoing coupling between visual sampling and motor control, suggesting the operation of an internal and alpha-cycling visuomotor loop.
Highlights
Rather than being serially ordered along distinct processing stages, action and perception are deemed to be tightly intertwined along all of the processing stages [1]. The latter take the form of loops, whereby descending signals interact at multiple timescales with different internal and ascending signals that inform about the body and the external world
At the end of the trial, a question mark appeared on the screen, which signaled participants to release the force and report verbally whether they had seen or not seen the stimulus (Fig 1A and 1B)
The correlation between the alpha-band filtered signals is clearly asymmetrical and leftward-shifted with respect to lag zero. These results indicate that the EEG alpha rhythm foreruns a corresponding peripheral rhythm in the force by about 0.2 seconds
Summary
Rather than being serially ordered along distinct processing stages, action and perception are deemed to be tightly intertwined along all of the processing stages [1] The latter take the form of loops, whereby descending (motor) signals interact at multiple timescales with different internal (predictions) and ascending (sensory) signals that inform about the body (e.g., proprioception) and the external world (e.g., vision). Neuronal excitability is subject to ongoing oscillatory fluctuations that yield measurable consequences at both perceptual [6,7,8,9] and motor [10,11,12] levels Phase synchronization of these oscillatory dynamics further provides a mechanism to appropriately time the excitability of distant groups of neurons, enabling functional coupling and selective information exchange [13,14,15]
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