Reading and modulating Cortical ß rursts from motor unit spiking activity

Bräcklein, Mario ; Barsakcioglu, Deren Y. ; Del Vecchio, Alessandro ; Ibáñez, Jaime ; Farina, Dario

Resumen: β Oscillations (13–30 Hz) are ubiquitous in the human motor nervous system. Yet, their origins and roles are unknown. Traditionally, β activity has been treated as a stationary signal. However, recent studies observed that cortical β occurs in “bursting events,” which are transmitted to muscles. This short-lived nature of β events makes it possible to study the main mechanism of β activity found in the muscles in relation to cortical β. Here, we assessed whether muscle β activity mainly results from cortical projections. We ran two experiments in healthy humans of both sexes (N = 15 and N = 13, respectively) to characterize β activity at the cortical and motor unit (MU) levels during isometric contractions of the tibialis anterior muscle. We found that β rhythms observed at the cortical and MU levels are indeed in bursts. These bursts appeared to be time-locked and had comparable average durations (40–80 ms) and rates (approximately three to four bursts per second). To further confirm that cortical and MU β have the same source, we used a novel operant conditioning framework to allow subjects to volitionally modulate MU β. We showed that volitional modulation of β activity at the MU level was possible with minimal subject learning and was paralleled by similar changes in cortical β activity. These results support the hypothesis that MU β mainly results from cortical projections. Moreover, they demonstrate the possibility to decode cortical β activity from MU recordings, with a potential translation to future neural interfaces that use peripheral information to identify and modulate activity in the central nervous system.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1885-21.2022

Año: 2022

Publicado en: JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE 42, 17 (2022), 3611-3621
ISSN: 0270-6474

Factor impacto JCR: 5.3 (2022)

Categ. JCR: NEUROSCIENCES rank: 62 / 272 = 0.228 (2022) - Q1 - T1

Factor impacto CITESCORE: 9.9 - Neuroscience (Q1)

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 2.35 - Neuroscience (miscellaneous) (Q1)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/847648 /EU/Junior Leader la Caixa Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme: Shaping the new generation of leaders in research/JUNIOR LEADER
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/899626/EU/NIMA: Non-invasive Interface for Movement Augmentation/NIMA

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)