Decoding Movement Goals from the Fronto-Parietal Reach Network

During reach planning, fronto-parietal brain areas need to transform sensory information into a motor code. It is debated whether these areas maintain a sensory representation of the visual cue or a motor representation of the upcoming movement goal. Here, we present results from a delayed pro-/anti-reach task which allowed for dissociating the position of the visual cue from the reach goal. In this task, the visual cue was combined with a context rule (pro vs. anti) to infer the movement goal. Different levels of movement goal specification during the delay were obtained by presenting the context rule either before the delay together with the visual cue (specified movement goal) or after the delay (underspecified movement goal). By applying functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we demonstrate movement goal encoding in the left dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) and bilateral superior parietal lobule (SPL) when the reach goal is specified. This suggests that fronto-parietal reach regions (PRRs) maintain a prospective motor code during reach planning. When the reach goal is underspecified, only area PMd but not SPL represents the visual cue position indicating an incomplete state of sensorimotor integration. Moreover, this result suggests a potential role of PMd in movement goal selection.