Prior Knowledge of Target Direction and Intended Movement Selection Improves Indirect Reaching Movement Decoding

Figure 1

Delayed obstacle-avoidance task and data acquisition. (a) Task epochs (top) and timeline (bottom). The red square (length of side: 130 pixels) in task epochs indicates delay cue, during which monkeys had to hold at the start position. The green bar represents an obstacle, touching of which would result in trial failure. The small blue ball and big yellow ball represent the moving cursor and target, respectively. The red and blue bars above the timeline show the intervals used for target direction and intended movement selection decoding, respectively. (b) Averaged reaching trajectories from the start position (small blue ball) to target position (big yellow ball) in one representative session (B140530). Depending on the position of the obstacle (not shown), there were two trajectories to the same target represented by solid and dashed lines in the same color. One trial would be started from any one of the four positions (top, down, left, and right), and the target ball would be on one of the rest three positions randomly. (c) Simultaneously recorded hand positions (X position, red; Y position, green) and spike trains in one representative trial.

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