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SUMMARY:Spontaneous cortical activity and self-initiated movement
DTSTART:20121010T131500
DTEND:20121010T141500
DTSTAMP:20260528T175205Z
UID:7afede356639deb1b14a0a2323ffee5f54a9c7ca3878255c748187f0
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Aaron Schurger\, INCERM\, FR.\nThe origin of voluntary\, s
 elf-initiated movements is one of the most fascinating and important quest
 ions in neuroscience research. An influential finding in this area of rese
 arch is that a gradual buildup of neuronal activity\, known as the “read
 iness potential” (RP)\, reliably precedes self-initiated movements. In t
 he early 1980’s\, Benjamin Libet found that the onset of the RP precedes
  the conscious “urge” to move by 300 ms or more (Libet et al\, 1983)\,
  and more recent study confirms the pre-urge buildup at the single-neuron 
 level (Fried et al\, 2011). A related experiment using fMRI showed that bi
 nary decisions could be predicted with better-than-chance accuracy\, sever
 al seconds before the decision was reached (Soon et al\, 2008). Experiment
 s such as these have had an unrivaled influence on the prevailing view tha
 t movement is initiated pre-consciously and the conscious “decision” t
 o move is grafted on after the fact—leaving many to doubt that we have c
 onscious control over our actions. This view\, however\, rests on the assu
 mption that neural activity that reliably precedes self-initiated or self-
 chosen actions reflects the unconscious initiation of those actions.\nOur 
 recent work (Schurger\, Sitt\, & Dehaene PNAS 2012) directly challenges th
 is assumption with the assertion that the RP reflects ongoing spontaneous 
 fluctuations in neural activity\, and not\, as has long been thought\, a s
 pecific goal-directed process. We demonstrate that neural-accumulator mode
 ls of decision-making can explain the kind of results cited above\, once t
 he autocorrelated nature of spontaneous brain activity is taken into accou
 nt. Our theoretical model provides answers to puzzling questions that are 
 not easily answered under the prevailing framework – for example\, why d
 o crayfish also have a readiness potential\, and why is the RP not an exce
 ptionally good predictor of movement onset? I will describe our model\, an
 d the evidence supporting it\, and will discuss its implications for the p
 rediction of behavior from brain activity\, the development of asynchronou
 s BCI's\, and the role of brain-body interactions in the initiation of mov
 ement. I will propose that a central theme connecting these different doma
 ins is the question of when to move\, and in closing I will briefly descri
 be work-in-progress on the development of a short-latency MEG/EEG-based as
 ynchronous BCI using the ADA-boost machine-learning algorithm. I will use 
 this project to highlight the potential synergy between BCI research\, sel
 f-initiated-movement research\, and schizophrenia research.
LOCATION:AI.1.153 http://plan.epfl.ch/?lang=fr&room=AI.1.153
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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