Alpha and beta band event-related desynchronization reflects kinematic regularities

55Citations
Citations of this article
194Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

Abstract

The short-lasting attenuation of brain oscillations is termed event-related desynchronization (ERD). It is frequently found in the alpha and beta bands in humans during generation, observation, and imagery of movement and is considered to reflect cortical motor activity and action-perception coupling. The shared information driving ERD in all these motor-related behaviors is unknown. We investigated whether particular laws governing production and perception of curved movement may account for the attenuation of alpha and beta rhythms. Human movement appears to be governed by relatively few kinematic laws of motion. One dominant law in biological motion kinematics is the 2/3 power law (PL), which imposes a strong dependency of movement speed on curvature and is prominent in action perception coupling. Here we directly examined whether the 2/3 PL elicits ERD during motion observation by characterizing the spatiotemporal signature of ERD. ERDswere measured while human subjects observed a cloud of dots moving along elliptical trajectories either complying with or violating the 2/3 PL. We found that ERD within both frequency bands was consistently stronger, arose faster, and was more widespread while observing motion obeying the 2/3 PL. An activity pattern showing clear 2/3 PL preference and lying within the alpha band was observed exclusively above central motor areas, whereas 2/3 PL preference in the beta band was observed in additional prefrontal– central cortical sites. Our findings reveal that compliance with the 2/3 PL is sufficient to elicit a selective ERD response in the human brain.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Meirovitch, Y., Harris, H., Dayan, E., Arieli, A., & Flash, T. (2015). Alpha and beta band event-related desynchronization reflects kinematic regularities. Journal of Neuroscience, 35(4), 1627–1637. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5371-13.2015

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free