Interwoven whole-body motor maps across the human precentral gyrus revealed by single-neuron recordings

An eight-participant BrainGate study mapped the crown of the human precentral gyrus at single-neuron resolution, finding whole-body representations at every sampled site with intermingled limb and speech tuning that partially follows the classic motor homunculus. The researchers identify four functional zones and demonstrate a compositional, limb-independent neural code that links limbs and allows robust decoding of 46 movements across regions, informing targeted strategies for multi-function motor BCIs and challenging strict somatotopy hypotheses.