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Human primary motor cortex indexes the onset of subjective intention in brain-machine-interface mediated actions

Noel, J.-P.; Bockbrader, M.; Colachis, S.; Solca, M.; Orepic, P.; Ganzer, P.; Haggard, P.; Rezai, A.; Blanke, O.; Serino, A.

2023-07-25 neuroscience
10.1101/2023.07.21.550067 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Self-initiated behavior is accompanied by the experience of willing our actions. Here, we leverage the unique opportunity to examine the full intentional chain - from will (W) to action (A) to environmental effects (E) - in a tetraplegic person fitted with a primary motor cortex (M1) brain machine interface (BMI) generating hand movements via neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES). This combined BMI-NMES approach allowed us to selectively manipulate each element of the intentional chain (W, A, and E) while performing extra-cellular recordings and probing subjective experience. Our results reveal single-cell, multi-unit, and population-level dynamics in human M1 that encode W and may predict its subjective onset. Further, we show that the proficiency of a neural decoder in M1 reflects the degree of W-A binding, tracking the participants subjective experience of intention in (near) real time. These results point to M1 as a critical node in forming the subjective experience of intention and demonstrate the relevance of intention-related signals for translational neuroprosthetics.

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