Fig. 3: A comparison of neural activity during 5 movement conditions.

Data on the left are aligned to target onset (solid vertical line) and truncated at the time of the earliest cue to initiate movement. Data on the right show the mean activity for preferred direction movements, relative to baseline, in the interval from 650 to 1150 ms (gray rectangle). a Beta-band LFP power (20–30 Hz) contains information about movement type. Power is computed in ±200 ms intervals every 100 ms. Colored shading indicates ±1 s.e.m. Responses to preferred and null directions showed no difference and so are merged across n = 312 sites. b Gamma-band LFP power (70–120 Hz) is similar but not identical to unit activity and unlike the beta band contains little additional information. (See text for additional detail.) Format as in a except that preferred and null directions are shown separately. Power is computed in ±100 ms intervals every 50 ms. c Single-unit activity is high when the animal prepares a contramanual reach in the preferred direction, whether alone (contramanual, solid red line), with an ipsimanual reach in the same direction (bimanual-together, blue), or with an ipsimanual reach in the opposite direction (bimanual-apart, purple). Firing is intermediate for preferred direction saccades and for preferred direction ipsimanual reaches (solid green and black), and for bimanual reaches in which the ipsilateral arm moves in the preferred direction and the contralateral arm moves out (bimanual-apart, dashed purple). (Bimanual-apart reaches are labeled based on the direction of the contralateral arm.) Activity is low for single-target movements in the null direction (dashed lines) during the delay period, independent of the movement type. Note that the divergence of firing rate associated with movement type (dotted vertical line) occurs ~100 ms sooner than the divergence in beta LFP power associated with movement type. Data from n = 113 single units. Colored shading indicates ±1 s.e.m. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.