Assessing corticospinal excitability and reaching hand choice during whole body motion

Behavioral studies have shown that humans account for inertial acceleration in their decisions of hand choice when reaching during body motion. Physiologically, it is unclear at what stage of movement preparation information about body motion is integrated with the process of hand selection. Here, we addressed this question by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation over left motor cortex (M1) of human participants who performed a preferential reach task while they were sinusoidally translated on a linear motion platform. If M1 only represents a read-out of the final hand choice, we expect the body motion not to affect the motor-evoked potential (MEP) amplitude. If body motion biases the hand selection process before target onset, we expect corticospinal excitability to be influenced by the phase of the motion, with larger MEP amplitudes for phases that show a bias to using the right hand. Behavioral results replicate our earlier findings of a sinusoidal modulation of hand choice bias with motion phase. MEP amplitudes also show a sinusoidal modulation with motion phase, suggesting that body motion influences corticospinal excitability, which may ultimately reflect changes of hand preference. The modulation being present before target onset suggests that competition between hands is represented throughout the corticospinal tract. Its phase relationship with the motion profile indicates that other processes after target onset take up time until the hand selection process has been completely resolved, and the reach is initiated.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Full body-motion biases decisions of hand choice. We examined the signatures of this bias in hand preference in corticospinal excitability before a reach target was presented. Our results show that behavior and corticospinal excitability modulate depending on the state of the body in motion. This suggests that information about body motion penetrates deeply within the motor system.