PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Nicholas G. Hatsopoulos
AU  - Qingqing Xu
AU  - Yali Amit
TI  - Encoding of Movement Fragments in the Motor Cortex
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3570-06.2007
DP  - 2007 May 09
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 5105--5114
VI  - 27
IP  - 19
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/19/5105.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/19/5105.full
SO  - J. Neurosci.2007 May 09; 27
AB  - Previous studies have suggested that complex movements can be elicited by electrical stimulation of the motor cortex. Most recording studies in the motor cortex, however, have investigated the encoding of time-independent features of movement such as direction, velocity, position, or force. Here, we show that single motor cortical neurons encode temporally evolving movement trajectories and not simply instantaneous movement parameters. We explicitly characterize the preferred trajectories of individual neurons using a simple exponential encoding model and demonstrate that temporally extended trajectories not only capture the tuning of motor cortical neurons more accurately, but can be used to decode the instantaneous movement direction with less error. These findings suggest that single motor cortical neurons encode whole movement fragments, which are temporally extensive and can be quite complex.