Voluntary Motor Imagery Demonstrated in Electroencephalography and Electromyography

Although recent advance of Brain Machine Interface (BMI), it was less clear what is a critical brain activation in relation to imaging one’s own body movement. By comparing the electromyography (EMG) signals related to primal motor cortical areas together with the somatosensory area (parietal cortex) by electroencephalography (EEG), we found brain activity that precedes by some 200 ms in motor imagery task in the parietal cortex in comparison with the voluntary task of their lower ankle uplift. Such components would be a direct precursor to the motor commands in the context of the skeleton muscle model.