The Role of Premotor Area in Decision-Making: Corticomuscular Connectivity as a Functional Biomarker for Motor Planning

LEONARDO ARIEL CANO; ALVARO GABRIEL PIZÁ; EDUARDO FERNANDEZ; FERNANDO DANIEL FARFÁN

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; SAN2022 MEETING; 2022

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

There are several theories about the role of the cerebral cortex areas related to motor planning and muscle activation. The aim of the present work has been to determine if there is a differentiation between hemispheres of the premotor area (PMA) in decision-making and movement planning. 17 (9♂ 8♀︎) healthy adult volunteers participated in an individualized study of motor reaction ability. We combined noninvasive recording techniques: EEG & EMG to quantify functional connectivity, motion capture & reactimeter to determine the stages of the task. The protocol included two conditions: simple and complex reaction, consisting of selecting and moving one arm to touch a luminous target. We used the former condition as a control and the latter to indicate functional differences during the decision time. We used the percentage change of corticomuscular coherence -in the beta band, 15 to 30 Hz- to compute corticomuscular synchronization/desynchronization, using a 1-second window before the onset of agonist contraction. The results revealed there were no differences in the control condition. While in the complex reaction condition, the contralateral PMA showed significantly (p