Disassociation between primary motor cortical activity and movement kinematics during adaptation to reach perturbations

The relationship between movement kinematics and motor cortical activity was studied in monkeys performing a center-out reaching task during their adaptation to force perturbations applied to the wrist. The main feature of adaptive changes in movement kinematics was anticipatory deviation of hand paths in the direction opposite to that of the upcoming perturbation. We identified a group of neurons in the dorsal lateral portion of the primary motor cortex where a gradual buildup of spike activity immediately preceding the actual (in perturbation trials) or the "would-be" (in unperturbed/catch trials) perturbation onset was observed. These neurons were actively involved in the adaptation process, which was evident from the gradual increase in the amplitude of their movement-related modulation of spike activity from virtual zero and development of certain directional tuning pattern (DTP). However, the day-to-day dynamics of the kinematics adaptation was dramatically different from that of the neuronal activity. Hence, the adaptive modification of the motor cortical activity is more likely to reflect the development of the internal model of the perturbation dynamics, rather than motor instructions determining the adaptive behavior.