Decoding motor imagery from the posterior parietal cortex of a tetraplegic human

+Author Affiliations

¹Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
²USC Neurorestoration Center and the Departments of Neurosurgery and Neurology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA.
³Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, Downey, CA 90242, USA.

↵†Corresponding author. E-mail: andersen@vis.caltech.edu

↵* These authors contributed equally to this work.

Nonhuman primate and human studies have suggested that populations of neurons in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) may represent high-level aspects of action planning that can be used to control external devices as part of a brain-machine interface. However, there is no direct neuron-recording evidence that human PPC is involved in action planning, and the suitability of these signals for neuroprosthetic control has not been tested. We recorded neural population activity with arrays of microelectrodes implanted in the PPC of a tetraplegic subject. Motor imagery could be decoded from these neural populations, including imagined goals, trajectories, and types of movement. These findings indicate that the PPC of humans represents high-level, cognitive aspects of action and that the PPC can be a rich source for cognitive control signals for neural prosthetics that assist paralyzed patients.