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Neurons in Primary Motor Cortex Encode Hand Orientation in a Reach-to-Grasp Task

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Abstract

It is disputed whether those neurons in the primary motor cortex (M1) that encode hand orientation constitute an independent channel for orientation control in reach-to-grasp behaviors. Here, we trained two monkeys to reach forward and grasp objects positioned in the frontal plane at different orientation angles, and simultaneously recorded the activity of M1 neurons. Among the 2235 neurons recorded in M1, we found that 18.7% had a high correlation exclusively with hand orientation, 15.9% with movement direction, and 29.5% with both movement direction and hand orientation. The distributions of neurons encoding hand orientation and those encoding movement direction were not uniform but coexisted in the same region. The trajectory of hand rotation was reproduced by the firing patterns of the orientation-related neurons independent of the hand reaching direction. These results suggest that hand orientation is an independent component for the control of reaching and grasping activity.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61233015 and 31460263), and the National Basic Research Development Program (973 Program) of China (2013CB329506). We appreciate the collaboration with Dr. Steve Helms Tillery and Dr. Yury Shimansky in the Neural Control Laboratory at Arizona State University, USA.

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Author notes

  1. Chaolin Ma and Xuan Ma have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Life Science and School of Life Science, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Chaolin Ma

  2. School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Chaolin Ma, Jing Fan & Jiping He

  3. School of Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Xuan Ma & Jiping He

  4. Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Jiping He

  5. Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Jiping He

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  1. Chaolin Ma
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  2. Xuan Ma
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  3. Jing Fan
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  4. Jiping He
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Correspondence to Chaolin Ma or Jiping He.

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Ma, C., Ma, X., Fan, J. et al. Neurons in Primary Motor Cortex Encode Hand Orientation in a Reach-to-Grasp Task. Neurosci. Bull. 33, 383–395 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-017-0126-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-017-0126-1

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