Movement encoding in one patient during contralateral (top panel) and ipsilateral (bottom panel) arm reaches. The color indicates how well the movement can be encoded from electrodes on the cortical surface, with red signifying high levels of encoding and yellow signifying low levels of encoding. Image credit: Merrick et al. (CC BY 4.0)
The brain is split into two hemispheres, each playing the leading role in coordinating movement for the opposite side of the body: lesions on the left hemisphere therefore often result in difficulties moving the right arm or leg, and vice versa. In fact, very few anatomical connections exist between a given hemisphere and the body parts on the same (or ‘ipsilateral’) side. Yet, movements produced with only one limb still engage both sides of the brain, with the hemisphere which does not control the action production, still encoding the direction and speed of the movement. Previous evidence also indicate that the two hemispheres may not have equal roles when coordinating ipsilateral movements.
Merrick et al. aimed to shed light on these processes; to do so, they measured electrical activity from the surface of the brain of six patients as they moved their arms to reach a screen. The results revealed that, while the right hemisphere only encoded information about the opposite arm, the left hemisphere contained information about both arms. Finer analyses showed that, for both hemispheres, moving the opposite arm was strongly associated with activity in the primary motor cortex, a region which helps to execute movements. However, in the left hemisphere, movements from the ipsilateral arm were related to activity in brain areas involved in planning and integrating different types of sensory information.
These findings contribute to a better understanding of how the motor system works, which could ultimately help with the development of brain-machine interfaces for patients who need a neuroprosthetic limb.
