Coding and decoding of decision signals for primate hand grasping

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hansjörg Scherberger
• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: from 2011 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 197355929

The use of the hand plays a central role in human motor behavior. Specialized brain areas in the premotor (area F5) and the parietal cortex (anterior intraparietal area, AIP) are crucial for high-level planning and selection of grasping movements. We propose to investigate in non-human primates (rhesus macaques) how decision signals for grasping movements are processed in AIP and F5 and whether they can be decoded in real-time for the control of artificial hands. This is promising since coding in these areas is particularly simple. We will record spiking and local field potential activity (LFP) while animals perform a grasp decision task, where they can freely select between two alternative responses (e.g., grip types) to receive a reward that could depend on the selected action. By exploring the neural activity in this free-choice task, we will explore how both areas collaborate during decision-making and how these activities differ to an instructed control task. Furthermore, we will decode spiking and LFP activity in real-time to test whether we can predict the intended grasp movement and to what extent reward expectation influences the prediction. This is crucial for the development of hand grasping prosthetics that can rely entirely on internal, volitional signals, i.e., independent of external instructions. Our proposed study is therefore a necessary step toward future BMIs that might employ these methods for the control of a robotic or bionic hand in human patients.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants