Direct electrical stimulation of the premotor cortex shuts down awareness of voluntary actions.

ABSTRACT: A challenge for neuroscience is to understand the conscious and unconscious processes underlying construction of willed actions. We investigated the neural substrate of human motor awareness during awake brain surgery. In a first experiment, awake patients performed a voluntary hand motor task and verbally monitored their real-time performance, while different brain areas were transiently impaired by direct electrical stimulation (DES). In a second experiment, awake patients retrospectively reported their motor performance after DES. Based on anatomo-clinical evidence from motor awareness disorders following brain damage, the premotor cortex (PMC) was selected as a target area and the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) as a control area. In both experiments, DES on both PMC and S1 interrupt

SUBMITTER: Fornia L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7000749 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature