Tag

Somatotopy

All articles tagged with #somatotopy

neuroscience1 month ago•81 min saved

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.

via Nature|

#brain-computer-interface #motor-cortex #neural-decoding

neuroscience3 years ago•8 min saved

New Study Suggests Mind-Body Connection is Hardwired in the Brain

The nervous system is cross-wired, so that the left side of the brain controls the right half of the body and vice versa. While this neural cross-wiring is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, biologists still aren’t certain what its benefit is. An intriguing answer has come from the world of mathematics. The key to that solution lies in exactly how neural circuits are laid out within brain tissue. The simplest way to introduce three-dimensionality into the 2D maps in our brain is to fold in the edges of the “body” plane 90 degrees, representing (for example) the skin of your chest folded around the sides of your rib cage. Folds in the cerebral cortex introduce a third dimension there too. Now, since the fibers must pass through the midline, because that’s where the central nervous system in our body runs, the two fibers become crossed.

via Quanta Magazine|

#bilateral-symmetry #brain-wiring #geometric-singularities