Cortical field potentials preceding visually initiated hand movements in the monkey

Summary

With electrodes implanted chronically on the surface and in the depth of the cortex, field potentials were led from the premotor cortex and forelimb areas of the motor and somatosensory cortices of monkeys performing visually initiated hand movements, and then averaged. It was found that the visually initiated movement was preceded by early (latency about 40 ms after the visual stimulus), surface positive, depth negative potentials in the premotor and forelimb motor cortices on both sides. Later on (at about 120 ms latency), surface negative, depth positive potentials emerged prior to the movement in the motor cortex contralateral to the moving hand. The early responses were interpreted as being induced via deep thalamo-cortical and/or corticocortical projections, while the later responses were via superficial thalamo-cortical projections, according to laminar field potential analyses of cortical evoked potentials made in our previous acute experiments. These potentials were clearly different from the premovement potentials recorded in the respective cortices prior to self-paced hand movements: monkeys performing self-paced hand movements showed slowly increasing, surface negative, depth positive premovement potentials in the premotor cortex and the forelimb motor and somatosensory areas contralateral to the moving hand. It was concluded that the central nervous mechanism preparing the cerebral cortex for visually initiated movements is considerably different from that for self-paced movements, both of which consist of the same wrist extension in lifting a lever.