Temporal Organization of Neurons Activity in Premotor Cortex Area During an Visually Guided Reach-to-Grasp Movements

In this project, the temporal organization of neurons in the premotor cortex area is investigated. The movement task which is studied in this paper is of reach-to-grasp type. Since the reach-to-grasp is a movement task, it is intuitive to investigate it in the premotor cortex area. We used electrophysiological signal provided by Brochier et al to improve the understanding of the temporal organization of neurons in the premotor cortex area. Our results show a wide variety of patterns in this area similar to what have seen before (Churchland 2006, Churchland 2007). Furthermore, the Fano factor decreased in this area after onset, which is similar to what has been seen in other parts of the brain (Falkner 2013). Moreover, Our results also illustrate the effect of the refractory period on inter-spike interval distribution and the type of point process that spikes are generated from. Overall, the study contributes to the improvement of understanding of temporal activity in the premotor cortex area with the help of analyzing the electrophysiological signal