A mosaic of whole-body representations on the human precentral gyrus

Key Points:

• This study involved eight participants with various motor impairments enrolled in two FDA-approved clinical trials, using implanted intracortical microelectrode arrays to record neural activity related to attempted or overt movements across the whole body.
• Neural signals were processed through filtering, noise reduction, and spike detection methods tailored per participant, with data binned in 20-ms intervals for offline analysis and decoding of movement-related neural activity.
• Participants performed a standardized cued movement task involving isolated, attempted or overt movements of different body parts, with neural data recorded during these tasks to examine motor cortex representations.
• Analyses included neural tuning strength estimation, recurrent neural network classification of movements, principal component analysis of array tuning properties, and correlations between homologous limb movement representations, revealing detailed spatial and functional organization of motor cortical activity.
• Additional methods involved data quality control, exclusion of arrays with insufficient tuning, use of Human Connectome Project parcellations and functional imaging data for anatomical localization, and quantitative video analysis of limb movements to verify isolated motor attempts.