title: The parietal reach region selectively anti-synchronizes with dorsal premotor cortex during planning.
abstract: Recent reports have indicated that oscillations shared across distant cortical regions can enhance their connectivity, but do coherent oscillations ever diminish connectivity? We investigated oscillatory activity in two distinct reach-related regions in the awake behaving monkey (Macaca mulatta): the parietal reach region (PRR) and the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd). PRR and PMd were found to oscillate at similar frequencies (beta, 15-30 Hz) during periods of fixation and movement planning. At first glance, the stronger oscillator of the two, PRR, would seem to drive the weaker, PMd. However, a more fine-grained measure, the partial spike-field coherence, revealed a different relationship. Relative to global beta-band activity in the brain, action potentials in PRR anti-synchronize with PMd oscillations. These data suggest that, rather than driving PMd during planning, PRR neurons fire in such a way that they are less likely to communicate information to PMd.
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering and Program in Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125 stetson@post.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Chess
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0549-8197
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stetson
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering and Program in Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125.
authors.forename: Richard A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Andersen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001611:Beta Rhythm; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003657:Decision Making; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D014851:Wakefulness
keywords: beta-band; coherence; local field potentials; parietal reach region; parietofrontal; spike-LFP coherence