Delivering instructional microstimulation in frontal and parietal cortical areas

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Abstract: For individuals with apraxia, damage to cortical areas involved in prehension, or the connections between these areas, results in an inability to perform a specific action associated with a particular object or instruction. Neuroprosthetic technology could bypass the damaged neural connections by delivering artificial instructions to specific cortical areas. One method of delivering artificial instructions is intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). Previous studies have demonstrated ICMS in primary somatosensory cortex can deliver instructions about how to perform behavioral tasks. Stimulating primary somatosensory cortex elicits sensations at different parts of the body. These different sensations are then associated with specific motor responses in order to perform the task. The proposed studies will examine the ability to use ICMS to deliver instructions in cortical areas associated with prehension. Prehension is the act of reaching and grasping, elaborated through two parallel neural pathways whereby visual information propagates from parietal cortex to motor cortex by way of premotor cortex. To our knowledge, no one has studied how ICMS could deliver instructions in other cortical areas. It is important to understand if other cortical areas can be instructed with ICMS equally well in order to develop methods for restoring damaged cortico-cortical connections. Preliminary data from this application suggest ICMS instructions can be successfully delivered to ventral premotor cortex, an area involved in planning grasps. Based on these successful preliminary results, other frontal and parietal areas involved in prehension will be tested to determine how well ICMS instructions can be delivered. Understanding which cortical areas can most readily be stimulated to deliver instructions, and how the underlying cortico-cortical connectivity affects the neural processing of these artificial instructions, will enable neuroprosthetic technology to bypass damaged cortico-cortical connections and become a clinically viable method for restoring lost cognitive motor function.