• The Bereitschaftspotential: What does it measure and where does it come from?
• From Surface to Depth Electrodes
• Surface recordings of the Bereitschaftspotential in normals
• The Bereitschaftspotential and the conscious will/intention to act
• Generator mechanisms of the Bereitschaftspotentials as studied by epicortical recording in patients with intractable partial epilepsy
• Intracerebal recordings of the Bereitschaftspotential and related potentials in cortical and subcortical structures in human subjects
• Dipole Source Modeling and the Generators of the Bereitschaftspotential
• Distributed source modeling in the analysis of movement-related activity
• Recordings of the movement-related potentials combined with PET, fMRI or MEG
• Generators of the movement-related cortical potentials and dipole source analysis
• The Bereitschaftspotential in Patient Groups
• Surface recordings in patients with movement disorders and the impact of subcortical surgery
• The Bereitschaftspotential in schizophrenia and depression
• Movement-related cortical potentials in patients with focal brain lesions
• Other Related EEG Measures
• Movement and ERD/ERS
• CNV and SPN: Indices of anticipatory behavior
• The lateralized readiness potential
• Other Approaches to Measuring Motor Preparation
• Movement selection, preparation, and the decision to act: neurophysiological studies in nonhuman primates
• Movement preparation: neuroimaging studies
• Finale
• Human freedom, reasoned will, and the brain: the Bereitschaftspotential story.

Kornhuber and Deecke first recorded and reported the Bereitschaftspotential in 1964. The aim of this book is to bring together in a single volume some of the important research on the Bereitschaftspotential and other movement-related cortical potentials and to highlight and address some of the pertinent questions relating to the Bereitschaftspotential and to identify the key issues for future investigation in this field. This book represents a unique compilation of information about the Bereitschaftspotential and related cortical potentials and techniques for measuring preparatory processes in the brain. The book will be of interest to motor physiologists, psychologists and neurologists working in clinical or research laboratories.

• 1. Introduction--
• 2. Early experiments on motor cortex--
• 3. An integrative map of the body--
• 4. Hierarchy in the cortical motor system--
• 5. Neuronal control of movement--
• 6. What can be learned from electrical stimulation?--
• 7. Complex movements evoked by electrical stimulation of motor cortex--
• 8. The match between natural neuronal properties and stimulation-evoked movement--
• 9. The movement repertoire of monkeys--
• 10. Dimensionality reduction as a theory of motor cortex organization--
• 11. Feedback remapping and the cortical-spinal-muscular system--
• 12. Social implications of motor control-- LITERATURE CITED-- INDEX.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

In The Intelligent Movement Machine: An Ethological Perspective on the Primate Motor System, Michael Graziano offers a fundamentally new theory of motor cortex organization: the rendering of the movement repertoire onto the cortex. The action repertoire of an animal is highly dimensional, whereas the cortical sheet is two-dimensional. Rendering the action space onto the cortex therefore results in a complex pattern, explaining the otherwise inexplicable details of the motor cortex organization. This clearly written book book includes a complete history of motor cortex research from its discovery to the present, a discussion of the major issues in motor cortex research, and an account of recent experiments that led to Graziano's "action map" view. Though focused on the motor cortex, the book includes a range of topics from an explanation of how primates put food in their mouths, to the origins of social beahvior such as smiling and laughing, to the mysterious link between movement disorders and autism. This book is written for a general audience, and should be of interest to experts, students, and the scientific lay.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. Basal ganglia (Systems Organization)
• Role of basal ganglia in sensory motor association learning
• Procedural learning in the monkey
• The primate basal ganglia between the intention and outcome of action
• 2. Basal ganglia (Cellular Organization)
• Corticostriatal neurons of the medial agranular cortex of rats
• Local circuit neurons in the frontal cortex and the neostriatum
• Long-term changes of corticostriatal synaptic transmission: possible implication for motor memory
• 3. Basal ganglia (Thalamo-cortical systems)
• Basal ganglia ‘loops’ with the cerebral cortex
• Synaptic organization of the ventral lateral thalamus and the reticular nucleus in the cerebello-thalamo-cortical system
• Pallidal output circuits in the thalamus
• 4. Frontal cortex
• Neuronal activity in the supplementary, presupplementary, and premotor cortex of monkey
• The role of dopamine in frontal motor cortical functions of monkeys
• 5. Clinical perspectives and future directions
• Activity of the pallidal neurons related to voluntary and involuntary movements in humans
• Mechanisms of bradykinesia
• disturbances in sensorimotor processing.

In this volume, which is based on the proceedings of the international symposium "Functional Linkages Between the Cerebral Cortex and Basal Ganglia in the Control of Voluntary Movement", held December 1993 in Osaka, Japan, the world's leading neuroscientists present the most up-to-date findings of current research on cortico-basal ganglia relations. Topics addressed in this book include the structure and function of basal ganglia cells and systems, the organization of thalamo-cortical systems, the frontal cortex, and clinical applications of ongoing studies. Of particular interest is the analysis of models of motor learning and functional schemes of cortico-basal ganglia and striatal circuitry. The valuable new insights this interdisciplinary work provides will benefit researchers and students in fields such as neurobiology, behavioral neurophysiology, neurochemistry, and neuropharmacology.

• Preface
• Introduction
• SECTION 1: THE NEURAL SUBSTRATES OF MENTAL AND MOTOR IMAGERY
• Multimodal Images in the Brain
• Neural bases of topographical representation in humans: Contribution of neuroimaging studies
• Contribution of the primary motor cortex to motor imagery
• Corticospinal facilitation during motor imagery
• SECTION 2: NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF MOTOR IMAGERY
• EEG Characteristics during Motor Imagery
• Electromyographic activity during motor imagery
• Autonomic nervous system activities during imagined movements
• Neurophysiological substrates of motor imagery ability
• SECTION 3: MOTOR IMAGERY IN REHABILITATION
• Motor imagery and the rehabilitation of movement disorders: an overview
• An overview of the effectiveness of motor imagery after stroke: A neuroimaging approach
• Motor imagery for optimising the reacquisition of locomotor skills after cerebral damage
• Motor Imagery Practice in Individuals with Parkinson's Disease
• Blindness and motor imagery
• EEG-based brain-computer communication
• SECTION 4: MOTOR IMAGERY IN LEARNING PROCESSES
• Motor imagery and motor performance: evidence from the sport science literature
• Meta-imagery Processes Among Elite Sports Performers
• The use of motor imagery in teaching surgical skills lessons from sports training
• Movement Imagery, Observation, and Skill
• From the mental representation of pain and emotions to empathy.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Mental imagery is the ability to form perceptual-like representations of objects or events on the basis of information stored in memory. Motor imagery is often used when the human body is involved, where subjects imagine the body moving or manipulating objects. The use of mental practice, including motor imagery for the rehabilitation of patients with cerebral motor impairments, is one of the most active areas in the field of motor imagery research. Such data provide evidence for imagery as a method in stroke rehabilitation, leading to reliable reconstruction of neural networks and thus to functional recovery. In recent years, our understanding of imagery has advanced greatly thanks to functional imaging studies using, for example, PET and fMRI. There is now ample evidence that a common neural substrate (albeit not identical) underlies mental imagery and visual perception, on the one hand, and motor performance and motor imagery, on the other. This book, the first of its kind, examines three main aspects of mental imagery. In the first part, the chapters address the neural basis of mental and motor imagery, the relationships between mental imagery and perception, and between motor imagery and physical execution. In the second part, the chapters focus on the evaluation of mental/motor imagery accuracy, including both central and peripheral nervous system recordings. The final chapters address the effects of mental practice on motor recovery after stroke. Providing a state of the art review along with in-depth summaries, meta-analyses, and research syntheses, this book will be important for those in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, physiology, and rehabilitation.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Ultrasound-induced neurostimulation has recently gained increasing attention. Developments in the use of ultrasound to stimulate and modulate neural activity have raised the possibility of using ultrasound as a new investigative and therapeutic tool in brain research. Little is known about the mechanisms by which it affects neural activity or about the range of acoustic parameters and stimulation protocols that elicit responses. In this thesis, conditions are established for transcranial stimulation of the nervous system in vivo, using the mouse somatomotor response. It is reported that (1) continuous-wave stimuli are as effective as or more effective than pulsed stimuli in eliciting responses, and responses are elicited with stimulus onset rather than stimulus offset; (2) stimulation success increases as a function of both acoustic intensity and acoustic duration; (3) interactions of intensity and duration suggest that successful stimulation results from the integration of stimulus amplitude over a time interval of 50 to 150 ms; (4) the motor response elicited appears to be an all-or-nothing phenomenon, meaning stronger stimulus intensities and durations increase the probability of a motor response without affecting the duration or strength of the response; and (5) motor responses, measured by normalized EMG signals in the neck and tail regions, change signifcantly when sonicating rostral and caudal regions of the mouse motor cortex. Taken together our findings present good evidence for being able to target selective parts of the motor cortex with ultrasound neurostimulation in the mouse, steps that should provide encouragement for the development of new applications in larger animal models, including humans.

Any time we move, our brains solve the difficult problem of translating our motor intentions to muscle commands. Understanding how this computation takes place, and in particular, what role the motor cortex plays in movement generation, has been a central issue in systems neuroscience that remains unresolved. In this thesis, we took an unconventional approach to the analysis of cortical neural activity and its relationship to executed movements. We used dimensionality reduction to extract the salient patterns of neural population activity, and related those to the muscle activity patterns generated during arm reaches to a grid of targets. We found that salient neural activity patterns appeared to tightly reflect muscle activity patterns with a biologically-plausible lag. We also applied our analyses to movements that were planned before being executed, and found that a muscle-framework view of the cortical activity was consistent with previously-described predictions of movement kinematics based on the state of the cortical population activity. Overall, our results elucidate remarkable simplicity of the motor-cortical activity at the population level, despite the complexity and heterogeneity of individual cell's activities.

Neural recording systems are fundamental to the advancement of brain-machine interfaces that can significantly improve the quality of lives of patients with neurological diseases, such as spinal cord injuries or quadriplegia. This thesis presents two newly developed wireless neural recording systems that are able to provide a high degree of usability and neural decoding accuracy. They are capable of simultaneously transmitting 32 to 96 channels of neural signals detected by an implanted neural sensor array. This work was carried out within the framework of the Hermes project and its technical design challenges will be addressed. The Hermes project is aimed at primarily developing hardware and software tools that extract neural information from the motor cortex. Those tools can enable practical prosthetic devices used to significantly ameliorate the life of patients with neurological impairments that directly affect motor functions. The first developed system, HermesD, is a 32-channel broadband transmission system using an FSK modulated carrier at 24 Mbit/s in the 3.7-4.1 GHz band. The link range extends beyond 20 m and the total power consumption is 142 mW. The HermesD system uses only COTS components and can be easily replicated. HermesD is fully operational and is currently used to transmit broadband neural data for neuroscience research in the Neural Prosthetic Systems Laboratory (NPSL) at Stanford University. HermesD is also planned as the base platform for future human trials to take place in the same laboratory. The second system that represents the next Hermes generation, HermesE, uses a novel UWB transmitter architecture implemented in a custom IC in the 65-nm CMOS technology. The transmitted signal bandwidth covers the 3.6 to 7.5 GHz frequency range. The time domain waveform is digitally programmable, allowing a very flexible control of the output spectrum to avoid interference and to allow multi-band operation. The UWB transmitter chip is part of a 96-channel broadband recording system delivering 40 Mbit/s. Its power consumption is 230 uW for a communication range of about 5 m. The antenna subsystems for these wireless recording devices presented a design challenge given the requirements for small size, large bandwidth and high efficiency. While HermesD has an operating FBW of 10%, HermesE is much more demanding in this respect, with 70% FBW, requiring unconventional antenna structures. The design techniques and performance of the antennas required to meet the specifications of both systems are also addressed in this work.

Movement preparation allows the rapid and accurate execution of voluntary movements, and can be influenced by factors that may change from moment to moment, such as attention and differences in stimulus properties. Consequently, movement preparation unfolds differently across many repetitions of the same movement. Averaging neural responses across many repetitions is necessary to interpret single-cell recordings, but diminishes our ability to characterize the dynamics of the underlying process. A central question in neuroscience, and also of fundamental clinical importance, is to understand how these plans develop in the brain. Several research groups are starting to build prosthetic devices that are controlled directly by neural activity in motor areas of the brain (Nicolelis, 2001; Donoghue, 2002; Musallam et al., 2004; Schwartz, 2004; Santhanam et al., 2006; Hochberg et al., 2006; Mulliken et al., 2008; Andersen et al., 2010), but the extent to which these can be developed may hinge critically upon our understanding of the neural basis of motor preparation. Simultaneous recording from populations of neurons allows dynamics of movement preparation to be estimated on single trials. Our goal is to characterize these dynamics, to gain insight into the process underlying movement preparation. Here, we recorded peri-saccadic activity from ensembles of neurons in an oculomotor area, prearcuate cortex, in two monkeys. While monkeys performed visually-guided eye movements, we measured firing rates of a population of neurons using a 96-electrode array. We studied (1) the responses from a heterogeneous population of prearcuate cortex neurons involved in decision-making and movement preparation, (2) the relationship between saccade initiation times and responses from the neural population, and (3) how these responses compared to those recorded in PMd, a cortical area involved in arm movements. The array data from prearcuate allowed us to compare responses from individual neurons with previous findings, but also allowed us to analyze the population dynamics of movement planning, by using techniques applied to the reach system. We found that ensemble responses from diverse populations of prearcuate neurons (1) can be visualized as trajectories moving through a low-dimensional neural state space, (2) reflect visual, decision-, and movement-related aspects of the task, and (3) correlate with a monkey's reaction time on a trial-by-trial basis. Further, the single-trial relationship between ensemble activity in prearcuate cortex and saccadic reaction times was qualitatively and quantitatively very similar to the relationship between ensemble activity in PMd and corresponding reach reaction times. This framework for analyzing neural population activity and dynamics should permit new extensions of single-neuron-level models, and may offer further insight into general mechanisms of movement preparation across motor systems.

The ultimate purpose of the motor system is clear: it exists to control the body. However, despite the motor system being among the longest-studied brain structures, it remains unclear how -- mechanistically -- motor cortex performs this function. Here, a mechanistic approach was taken to investigate how primary motor cortex (M1) and dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) control movement. That is, the goal was to elucidate the dynamics of the motor cortex 'machine.' Monkeys were trained in reaching tasks, and neural signals were recorded from their brains as they performed them. Two broad classes of analysis were used. First, cell-by-cell analyses were combined with cell-type analyses, which permitted examining the activity patterns of excitatory and inhibitory neurons separately. Second, techniques based on dynamical systems analysis (such as dimensionality reduction) were applied, which permitted analysis of neural populations as a whole and abstraction to a somewhat higher level of system function. Three major results and a technical advance are presented. Firstly, we investigated how it is possible for an animal to hold still even as neural activity in motor cortex changes drastically during preparation for the upcoming movement. We found that, contrary to common assumptions, there does not appear to be a 'gate' comprised of high inhibition during preparation. Instead, using the dynamical systems perspective, we found that preparatory activity has a special structure such that it remains in intrinsically muscle neutral, 'iso-force' patterns. Secondly, we searched for coherent dynamics in the movement-time activity of motor cortex. We found that motor cortex appears to obey a relatively simple set of dynamics, dominated by oscillatory patterns. Moreover, the exact neural trajectory is heavily determined ('seeded') by the immediately preceding preparatory activity. In order to causally perturb these dynamics with patterned stimulation and cell-type specificity, we then developed a set of optogenetic techniques for use in primates. Finally, we investigated how the dynamics of the decision-making process are reflected in motor cortex. To do so, we combined a novel decision-making paradigm, many simultaneous neural recordings, and single-trial analytical techniques. Preliminary results are given for this final section, demonstrating the presence of vacillation in monkey decision-making. In summary, we found that preparation and movement can be understood as an oscillatory dynamical system seeded by preparatory activity that lives in an iso-force space, that inhibitory and excitatory neurons seem to play more similar roles in the dynamical system than might be expected, and that moment-by-moment processes of motor decision-making can be seen in motor cortex.