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 amplitud..., Electrophysiology
Neural recordings were collected from two male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), Bx and Ls. They were each implanted with a set of dual 64-electrode Utah multi-electrode arrays (Blackrock Microsystems, Salt Lake City, UT) in the left primary motor cortex. The electrode lengths were 1.5mm for Bx and 1mm for Ls, with a uniform inter-electrode distance of 400µm in the 8-by-8 grid. The arrays corresponded to the arm/hand areas of the limb trained for the task, as confirmed by electrically stimulating the cortex during surgery with surface electrodes and observing corresponding twitches prior to array implantation. All procedures regarding surgery, animal training and data collection were approved by the University of Chicago Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and obey the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
Behavioral task
The animals were trained to perform a reach task in different directions with their right upper limb constrained by a 2D ..., Please see this GitHub repo for python code
https://github.com/hatsopoulos-lab/macaque-spatio_temporal_pattern
Please cite this paper if you are using this dataset. 
Liang, W., Balasubramanian, K., Papadourakis, V., Hatsopoulos, N. G. (2023) Propagating spatio-temporal activity patterns across macaque motor cortex carry kinematic information. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences