Neural encoding of felt and imagined touch within human posterior parietal cortex

In the human posterior parietal cortex (PPC), single units encode high-dimensional information with partially mixed representations that enable small populations of neurons to encode many variables relevant to movement planning, execution, cognition, and perception. Here we test whether a PPC neuronal population previously demonstrated to encode visual and motor information is similarly selective in the somatosensory domain. We recorded from 1423 neurons within the PPC of a human clinical trial participant during objective touch presentation and during tactile imagery. Neurons encoded experienced touch with bilateral receptive fields, organized by body part, and covered all tested regions. Tactile imagery evoked body part specific responses that shared a neural substrate with experienced touch. Our results are the first neuron level evidence of touch encoding in human PPC and its cognitive engagement during tactile imagery which may reflect semantic processing, sensory anticipation, and imagined touch.

Cognition in Sensorimotor Control: Interfacing With the Posterior Parietal Cortex

Millions of people worldwide are afflicted with paralysis from a disruption of neural pathways between the brain and the muscles. Because their cortical architecture is often preserved, these patients are able to plan movements despite an inability to execute them. In such people, brain machine interfaces have great potential to restore lost function through neuroprosthetic devices, circumventing dysfunctional corticospinal circuitry. These devices have typically derived control signals from the motor cortex (M1) which provides information highly correlated with desired movement trajectories. However, sensorimotor control simultaneously engages multiple cognitive processes such as intent, state estimation, decision making, and the integration of multisensory feedback. As such, cortical association regions upstream of M1 such as the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) that are involved in higher order behaviors such as planning and learning, rather than in encoding movement itself, may enable enhanced, cognitive control of neuroprosthetics, termed cognitive neural prosthetics (CNPs). We illustrate in this review, through a small sampling, the cognitive functions encoded in the PPC and discuss their neural representation in the context of their relevance to motor neuroprosthetics. We aim to highlight through examples a role for cortical signals from the PPC in developing CNPs, and to inspire future avenues for exploration in their research and development

Cognition in Sensorimotor Control: Interfacing With the Posterior Parietal Cortex

Millions of people worldwide are afflicted with paralysis from a disruption of neural pathways between the brain and the muscles. Because their cortical architecture is often preserved, these patients are able to plan movements despite an inability to execute them. In such people, brain machine interfaces have great potential to restore lost function through neuroprosthetic devices, circumventing dysfunctional corticospinal circuitry. These devices have typically derived control signals from the motor cortex (M1) which provides information highly correlated with desired movement trajectories. However, sensorimotor control simultaneously engages multiple cognitive processes such as intent, state estimation, decision making, and the integration of multisensory feedback. As such, cortical association regions upstream of M1 such as the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) that are involved in higher order behaviors such as planning and learning, rather than in encoding movement itself, may enable enhanced, cognitive control of neuroprosthetics, termed cognitive neural prosthetics (CNPs). We illustrate in this review, through a small sampling, the cognitive functions encoded in the PPC and discuss their neural representation in the context of their relevance to motor neuroprosthetics. We aim to highlight through examples a role for cortical signals from the PPC in developing CNPs, and to inspire future avenues for exploration in their research and development

The human primary somatosensory cortex encodes imagined movement in the absence of sensory information

Classical systems neuroscience positions primary sensory areas as early feed-forward processing stations for refining incoming sensory information. This view may oversimplify their role given extensive bi-directional connectivity with multimodal cortical and subcortical regions. Here we show that single units in human primary somatosensory cortex encode imagined reaches in a cognitive motor task, but not other sensory–motor variables such as movement plans or imagined arm position. A population reference-frame analysis demonstrates coding relative to the cued starting hand location suggesting that imagined reaching movements are encoded relative to imagined limb position. These results imply a potential role for primary somatosensory cortex in cognitive imagery, engagement during motor production in the absence of sensation or expected sensation, and suggest that somatosensory cortex can provide control signals for future neural prosthetic systems

Neural correlates of cognitive motor signals in primary somatosensory cortex

Classical systems neuroscience positions primary sensory areas as early feed-forward processing stations for refining incoming sensory information. This view may oversimplify their role given extensive bi-directional connectivity with multimodal cortical and subcortical regions. Here we show that single units in human primary somatosensory cortex encode imagined reaches centered on imagined limb positions in a cognitive motor task. This result suggests a broader role of primary somatosensory cortex in cortical function than previously demonstrated

The human primary somatosensory cortex encodes imagined movement in the absence of sensory information

Classical systems neuroscience positions primary sensory areas as early feed-forward processing stations for refining incoming sensory information. This view may oversimplify their role given extensive bi-directional connectivity with multimodal cortical and subcortical regions. Here we show that single units in human primary somatosensory cortex encode imagined reaches in a cognitive motor task, but not other sensory–motor variables such as movement plans or imagined arm position. A population reference-frame analysis demonstrates coding relative to the cued starting hand location suggesting that imagined reaching movements are encoded relative to imagined limb position. These results imply a potential role for primary somatosensory cortex in cognitive imagery, engagement during motor production in the absence of sensation or expected sensation, and suggest that somatosensory cortex can provide control signals for future neural prosthetic systems

Felt, Imagined, and Seen Touch Share a Substrate in Human Posterior Parietal Cortex

One of the most remarkable aspects of human cognition is its flexibility. We can think new thoughts, infer meaning, plan actions, predict, extrapolate, and so much more. How do our brains enable this versatility? A growing ability to simultaneously record from large populations of single neurons in human cortex has begun to provide insight. Recent studies have identified that shared populations of neurons in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of a human subject (involved in a brain-machine interface (BMI) clinical trial) encode many aspects of motor cognition: attempted and imagined actions, observed actions and the semantic processing of action verbs. Individual units are complex, but population representations manifest rich associations across neurons, supporting diverse behavioral contexts. Here, in novel work, we establish that the same PPC substrate also encodes aspects of sensory cognition, and unpack the functional organization of information that enables this versatility. We record populations of neurons in PPC of the same human subject, a tetraplegic trial participant implanted with a 4x4 mm microelectrode array. In a series of novel results, we first establish that neurons in this PPC substrate encode actual (or felt) touch to oneself, at short latency, with bilateral receptive fields, organized by body-part. We show that imagined touch to oneself and observed touch to others engage the same substrate. To understand coding mechanisms further, we manipulated the touch location (cheek, shoulder), and the touch type (pinch, press, rub, tap). As in the motor domain, individual neurons exhibit highly variable responses. At the population-level, however, we find that the diverse touch conditions are explained by a small number of subspaces (meaningful groupings of neurons) that encode basic-level, elemental information such as touch location, and touch type. This suggests a compositional basis in PPC, such that various touch conditions are encoded through diverse combinations of common primitive elements. Moreover, these subspaces are generalizable, able to explain novel (held out) data. These principles of compositionality and generalizability suggest a basis by which PPC may support cognitive behaviors such as comprehension, in situations that extend beyond our experiences. In support of this interpretation, we show finally that this PPC substrate encodes seen touch universally – not only to insensate arm regions on the tetraplegic human subject, and to other human individuals, but also to a wide sampling of inanimate objects. As predicted, neural information combines and generalizes across conditions such that touch to objects with more similar features, is more similarly encoded. Taken together, our work is a novel, neuron-level characterization of how high-level cortex in humans may support diverse sensory, motor, and cognitive behaviors. We speculate that populations of neurons in PPC encode rich internal models of the world that can be flexibly repurposed for diverse (and novel) behavioral contexts