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Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

Motor and Sensory Areas of the Cortex

The cerebral cortex, the brain's outermost layer, is pivotal in processing complex cognitive tasks, emotions, and various sensory inputs and executing voluntary motor activities. This intricate structure is divided into three primary functional areas: the motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas.
Motor Areas
The motor areas located in the frontal lobe are central to controlling voluntary movements. This region is further subdivided into the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex....

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 27, 2026

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation

Published on: December 31, 2013

Resting-state brain activity in the motor cortex reflects task-induced activity: A multi-voxel pattern analysis.

Toshiki Kusano, Hiroki Kurashige, Isao Nambu

Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference

|January 7, 2016

Summary

Resting-state brain activity contains detailed neural representations of specific movements, similar to task-induced activity. This suggests motor areas are more organized during rest than previously thought.

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Last Updated: Mar 27, 2026

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation

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Published on: December 31, 2013

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy of the Sensory and Motor Brain Regions with Simultaneous Kinematic and EMG Monitoring During Motor Tasks

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy of the Sensory and Motor Brain Regions with Simultaneous Kinematic and EMG Monitoring During Motor Tasks

Published on: December 5, 2014

Intracortical Inhibition Within the Primary Motor Cortex Can Be Modulated by Changing the Focus of Attention

Intracortical Inhibition Within the Primary Motor Cortex Can Be Modulated by Changing the Focus of Attention

Published on: September 11, 2017

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Brain Activity Analysis

Background:

Resting-state brain activity may reflect patterns observed during task performance.
Investigating neural representations in motor areas during rest is crucial for understanding brain organization.

Purpose of the Study:

To determine if specific movement representations exist in resting-state motor cortex activity.
To compare neural representations during rest and task conditions.

Main Methods:

Defined two regions of interest (ROIs) for motor tasks.
Utilized multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) with regularized logistic regression to decode neural representations.
Applied a trained decoder to both task-induced and resting-state brain activity.

Main Results:

Decoders accurately discriminated resting-state neural activity, comparable to task-induced activity.
Learned model weights showed similar distributions for resting-state and task conditions, with key patterns in conjunctive areas.
Detection accuracy for resting-state activity surpassed that of random decoders, confirming meaningful patterns.

Conclusions:

Resting-state brain activity in motor areas contains finely organized, complex multi-voxel patterns.
Neural representations of specific movements are present even during periods of rest.
This challenges conventional views of resting-state brain organization.