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Dynamic Digital Biomarkers of Motor and Cognitive Function in Parkinson's Disease

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Published on: July 24, 2019

Individual Movement Variability Magnitudes Are Explained by Cortical Neural Variability.

Shlomi Haar^1,2, Opher Donchin^3,4, Ilan Dinstein^5,2,4

¹Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, haar@post.bgu.ac.il.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience

|August 20, 2017

Summary

Individual differences in motor variability are consistent and reproducible. Neural variability in the posterior-parietal cortex predicts kinematic variability in reaching movements, suggesting distinct motor capabilities.

Keywords:

fMRI motor control motor system movement variability neural variability

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The "Motor" in Implicit Motor Sequence Learning: A Foot-stepping Serial Reaction Time Task

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Published on: May 3, 2018

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Motor Control
Human Movement

Background:

Human motor behavior exhibits significant variability, even in simple tasks.
This kinematic variability is thought to arise from distinct neural processes.
Individual differences in motor variability are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate individual consistency in motor kinematic variability.
To explore the relationship between neural variability and motor variability.
To identify brain regions associated with individual differences in motor variability.

Main Methods:

Participants performed reaching movements with either arm.
Simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to record brain activity.
Kinematic and fMRI variability were analyzed across trials and participants.

Main Results:

Individual subjects showed consistent magnitudes of kinematic variability across different targets and arms.
Consistent individual differences in fMRI variability were observed in motor areas.
fMRI variability in the posterior-parietal cortex correlated with movement-extent variability.

Conclusions:

Neural and kinematic variability are reliable individual characteristics.
Posterior-parietal cortex activity variability may underlie individual differences in motor control.
These findings suggest neural variability influences motor capabilities.