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Differential neural plasticity of individual fingers revealed by fMRI neurofeedback

Ethan Oblak, Jarrod Lewis-Peacock, View ORCID ProfileJames Sulzer
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.02.973586
Ethan Oblak
1Departments of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
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  • For correspondence: eoblak@utexas.edu
Jarrod Lewis-Peacock
2Departments of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin
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James Sulzer
1Departments of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
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Abstract

Previous work has shown that fMRI activity patterns associated with individual fingers can be shifted by temporary impairment of the hand. Here, we investigated whether these neural activity patterns could be modulated endogenously and whether any behavioral changes result from this modulation. We used decoded neurofeedback in healthy individuals to encourage participants to shift the neural activity pattern in sensorimotor cortex of the middle finger towards the index finger, and the ring finger towards the little finger. We first mapped the neural activity patterns for all fingers of the right hand in an fMRI pattern localizer session. Then, in three subsequent neurofeedback sessions, participants were rewarded after middle/ring finger presses according to their activity pattern overlap during each trial. A force-sensitive keyboard was used to ensure that participants were not altering their physical finger coordination patterns. We found evidence that participants could learn to shift the activity pattern of the ring finger but not of the middle finger. Increased variability of these activity patterns during the localizer session was associated with the ability of participants to modulate them using neurofeedback. Participants also showed an increased preference for the ring finger but not for the middle finger in a post-neurofeedback motor task. Our results show that neural activity and behaviors associated with the ring finger are more readily modulated than those associated with the middle finger. These results have broader implications for rehabilitation of individual finger movements, which may be limited or enhanced by individual finger plasticity after neurological injury.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Added univariate analysis to Results and Methods; Figure 2 updated to include raw decoder outputs and univariate activations

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted May 07, 2020.
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Differential neural plasticity of individual fingers revealed by fMRI neurofeedback
Ethan Oblak, Jarrod Lewis-Peacock, James Sulzer
bioRxiv 2020.03.02.973586; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.02.973586
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Differential neural plasticity of individual fingers revealed by fMRI neurofeedback
Ethan Oblak, Jarrod Lewis-Peacock, James Sulzer
bioRxiv 2020.03.02.973586; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.02.973586

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