Emergent coordination underlying learning to reach to grasp with a brain-machine interface

Mukta Vaidya, Karthikeyan Balasubramanian, Joshua Southerland, Islam Badreldin, Ahmed Eleryan, Kelsey Shattuck, Suchin Gururangan, Marc Slutzky, Leslie Osborne, Andrew Fagg, Karim Oweiss, Nicholas G. Hatsopoulos*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

The development of coordinated reach-to-grasp movement has been well studied in infants and children. However, the role of motor cortex during this development is unclear because it is difficult to study in humans. We took the approach of using a brain-machine interface (BMI) paradigm in rhesus macaques with prior therapeutic amputations to examine the emergence of novel, coordinated reach to grasp. Previous research has shown that after amputation, the cortical area previously involved in the control of the lost limb undergoes reorganization, but prior BMI work has largely relied on finding neurons that already encode specific movement-related information. In this study, we taught macaques to cortically control a robotic arm and hand through operant conditioning, using neurons that were not explicitly reach or grasp related. Over the course of training, stereotypical patterns emerged and stabilized in the cross-covari-ance between the reaching and grasping velocity profiles, between pairs of neurons involved in controlling reach and grasp, and to a comparable, but lesser, extent between other stable neurons in the network. In fact, we found evidence of this structured coordination between pairs composed of all combinations of neurons decoding reach or grasp and other stable neurons in the network. The degree of and participation in coordination was highly correlated across all pair types. Our approach provides a unique model for studying the development of novel, coordinated reach-to-grasp movement at the behavioral and cortical levels. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Given that motor cortex undergoes reorganization after amputation, our work focuses on training nonhuman primates with chronic amputations to use neurons that are not reach or grasp related to control a robotic arm to reach to grasp through the use of operant conditioning, mimicking early development. We studied the development of a novel, coordinated behavior at the behavioral and cortical level, and the neural plasticity in M1 associated with learning to use a brain-machine interface.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1291-1304
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of neurophysiology
Volume119
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2018

Funding

This research was supported by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grant N66 001-1211-4023; Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship: Integrative Research in Motor Control and Movement, National Science Foundation Grant DGE-0903637; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Grant R01NS045853; National Science Foundation IOS 145704; and National Eye Institute EY023371.

Keywords

  • Brain-machine interfaces
  • Learning
  • Neural coordination
  • Primary motor cortex
  • Reach to grasp

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Neuroscience
  • Physiology

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