Predicting Upcoming Events Occurring in the Space Surrounding the Hand

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Motor Control
• Sensory Processing

Background:

• Predicting sensorimotor events is crucial for skilled motor behavior.
• This requires accurate, updated body and environmental representations.
• The impact of peripheral injury on these predictive mechanisms is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if peripheral injury affects sensorimotor prediction mechanisms.
• To identify electroencephalogram (EEG) signatures of prediction in healthy and brachial plexus injury (BPI) participants.

Main Methods:

• Action observation and EEG paradigm used.
• Participants (healthy and BPI) observed videos of hand-ball interactions.
• EEG recorded from sensorimotor cortex during prediction of hand movement, tactile event, or no event.

Main Results:

• Healthy participants showed distinct EEG signatures for predicting hand movement and tactile events.
• BPI participants exhibited altered EEG signals in the sensorimotor cortex for hand movement prediction.
• BPI patients showed no difference between tactile and no-movement conditions, indicating blurred tactile prediction.

Conclusions:

• The sensorimotor cortex is vital for estimating actions and tactile interactions.
• Peripheral sensorimotor loss can lead to plastic changes in prediction coding.
• BPI specifically impairs the prediction of upcoming tactile events for the dominant hand.