Study of Kinematic Planning and Initiation of Hand Movement using Electroencephalography

Abstract

The current study has made an attempt to understand two important aspects of movement preparation – velocity (kinematics) planning and the temporal planning. To do so, I had designed a novel reaching movement task where subjects make a reaching movement to the target with an instructed velocity. Also, unlike the previous studies on temporal planning using EEG, the current task provided the hold time for the preparation of movement after the instructing the movement parameters. The results from the first part of the study suggest that the gamma power (30-70 Hz) is correlated to the velocity and is likely to represent in the parietal cortex. Also, a chronology of these fluctuations in gamma power indicates that the kinematic parameters are likely to encode in parietal region and then move towards the premotor and motor cortex. The second part of the study demonstrated that for the immediate movements (no hold time) the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) activity follows a LATER type accumulation model while for delayed movements this accumulation model fails to explain the variability in the reaction time. Also, the results of the present study indicate that the extra preparation time after instructing the movement parameters facilitates the response preparation stages instead of response selection processes.