title: Distributed task-specific processing of somatosensory feedback for voluntary motor control.
abstract: Corrective responses to limb disturbances are surprisingly complex, but the neural basis of these goal-directed responses is poorly understood. Here we show that somatosensory feedback is transmitted to many sensory and motor cortical regions within 25 ms of a mechanical disturbance applied to the monkey's arm. When limb feedback was salient to an ongoing motor action (task engagement), neurons in parietal area 5 immediately (~25 ms) increased their response to limb disturbances, whereas neurons in other regions did not alter their response until 15 to 40 ms later. In contrast, initiation of a motor action elicited by a limb disturbance (target selection) altered neural responses in primary motor cortex ~65 ms after the limb disturbance, and then in dorsal premotor cortex, with no effect in parietal regions until 150 ms post-perturbation. Our findings highlight broad parietofrontal circuits that provide the neural substrate for goal-directed corrections, an essential aspect of highly skilled motor behaviors.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's Univertsity, Kingston, Canada.|Brain Health Institute, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, New Jersey, United States.
authors.forename: Mohsen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Omrani
authors.affiliation: Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's Univertsity, Kingston, Canada.
authors.forename: Chantelle D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Murnaghan
authors.affiliation: Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's Univertsity, Kingston, Canada.|Physiology and Pharmacology, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: J Andrew
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0786-0081
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Pruszynski
authors.affiliation: Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's Univertsity, Kingston, Canada.|Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.|Department of Medicine, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
authors.forename: Stephen H
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8821-1843
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Scott
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005246:Feedback; D000882:Haplorhini; D008124:Locomotion; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: computational biology; cortical response; mechanical perturbation; motor control; non-human primates; rhesus macaque; sensory feedback; systems biology; task dependency