Hand position fields of neurons in the premotor cortex of macaques during natural reaching

Sheng-Hao Cao, Xin-Yong Han, Zhi-Ping Zhao, Jian-Wen Gu, Tian-Zi Jiang and Shan Yu ()
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Sheng-Hao Cao: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xin-Yong Han: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhi-Ping Zhao: First Hospital of Jilin University
Jian-Wen Gu: The 9th Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital
Tian-Zi Jiang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shan Yu: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract While hippocampus represents spatial information through place cells for body navigation, whether motor areas employ a similar framework to guide hand reaching remains unknown. Here, we investigate tuning properties in dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) during naturalistic reach-and-grasp tasks in four monkeys. We find that 22% (132/601) of PMd neurons increase firing rates when the monkey’s hand occupies specific positions in space, forming the position fields. These cells represent the hand position highly efficiently, achieving ~80% accuracy for decoding hand trajectories with only 50 most dedicated position tuned cells ( ~ 10% of all recorded neurons). The hand position is co-represented with hand moving direction, speed, and reward location in the same population of PMd neurons, forming a mixed-selective framework to integrate positional and kinematic information. Our findings suggest field-like positional coding may be a mechanism shared across brain regions for spatial representation in goal-directed movements, including body navigation and forelimb reaching.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58786-3

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