Neural Manifolds Underlying Naturalistic Human Movements in Electrocorticography

An open question in neuroscience is how the brain controls naturally generated movements. An increasing number of studies have shown that high-dimensional neural population dynamics lie within low-dimensional manifolds, which may be integral to neural control of behavior. However, many of these studies have focused on neural activity recorded during experimentally driven movements with little variability, leaving open the question of whether low-dimensional neural manifolds persist during naturalistic movements. In this paper, we investigate neural population dynamics in naturalistic reaching movements across 12 individuals’ electrocorticography (ECoG) data recorded during their 5 day hospital stay. We found that for all 12 individuals the neural dynamics during four types of arm movements did lie within the same neural manifolds. These manifold spaces also did not drift significantly across the multiple days of their hospital stay. We then compared neural dynamics between individuals for the same types of movements, and found that the manifolds were also aligned between individuals. The alignment of these neural manifold spaces during naturalistic movement indicates that neural manifolds may represent a general principle of movement control.