Movement-related potentials in the human spinal cord preceding toe movement

A method by which potentials related to voluntary movement can be recorded noninvasively from the human spinal cord is presented.

A novel signal processing technique performed on signals recorded by surface electrodes placed over the spinal column was used to filter time-locked back muscle noise, so that the only remaining signals were the spinal movement-related potentials from the brain to the limbs and vice versa.

The signals obtained from 7 subjects using this technique are shown and temporally compared with movement-related cortical potentials (MRCP) and muscle electromyogram. It is demonstrated that the spinal signal starts approximately 600 ms before the actual movement, and that some features of this signal correspond to changes in cortical potentials.

These findings imply that the spinal cord is not a simple command-carrying medium from the brain to the limbs, and implies that some computational activities take place at the spinal cord level.