Motor cortex retains and reorients neural dynamics during motor imagery
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Abstract
The most prominent characteristic of motor cortex is its activation during movement execution, but it is also active when we simply imagine movements in the absence of actual motor output. Despite decades of behavioural and imaging studies, it is unknown how the specific activity patterns and temporal dynamics in motor cortex during covert motor imagery relate to those during motor execution. Here we recorded intracortical activity from the motor cortex of two people who retain some residual wrist function following incomplete spinal cord injury as they performed both actual and imagined isometric wrist extensions. We found that we could decompose the population activity into three orthogonal subspaces, where one was similarly active during both action and imagery, and the others were active only during a single task type-action or imagery. Although they inhabited orthogonal neural dimensions, the action-unique and imagery-unique subspaces contained a strikingly similar set of dynamic features. Our results suggest that during motor imagery, motor cortex maintains the same overall population dynamics as during execution by reorienting the components related to motor output and/or feedback into a unique, output-null imagery subspace.
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- Authors
- Dekleva, B. M., Chowdhury, R. H., Batista, A. P., Chase, S. M., Yu, B. M., Boninger, M. L., & Collinger, J. L.
- Affiliations
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (US)
- Corresponding author
- Collinger, Jennifer L.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2024-01-29
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 729-742
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11089477
- OpenAlex
- W4391316983
- Cited by
- 57
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 12
- FWCI
- 13.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | National Institutes of Health (UH3NS107714, U01NS108922)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Motor Control and Adaptation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces
- Keywords
- motor cortex, motor imagery, motor execution, neural dynamics, population activity, orthogonal subspaces, incomplete spinal cord injury, intracortical recording
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