Propagating spatio-temporal activity patterns across macaque motor cortex carry kinematic information

Propagating spatio-temporal neural patterns are widely evident across sensory, motor and association cortical areas. However, it remains unclear whether any characteristics of neural propagation carry information about specific behavioral details. Here, we provide the first evidence for a link between the direction of cortical propagation and specific behavioral features of an upcoming movement on a trial-by-trial basis. We recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from multi-electrode arrays implanted in the primary motor cortex of two rhesus macaque monkeys while they performed a 2-D reach task. Propagating patterns were extracted from the information-rich high-gamma band (200–400Hz) envelopes in the LFP amplitude. We found that the exact direction of propagating patterns varied systematically according to initial movement direction, enabling kinematic predictions. Furthermore, characteristics of these propagation patterns provided additional predictive capability beyond the LFP amplitude themselves, which suggests the value of including mesoscopic spatio-temporal characteristics in refining brain-machine interfaces.