Event-Related potentials in Externally and Internally-Driven target Selection: a Preliminary Study

In this study we investigated the cue-locked (P300 and later event-related potentials components) and response-locked electroencephalography (EEG) phenomena associated to externally and internally-driven target selection. For that we designed a novel paradigm, that aimed to separate the selection of motor goals according to the respective task rules from the actual programming of the upcoming motor response. Our paradigm also made possible the estimation of the onset of a self-paced reach-and-grasp movement imagination for better capturing the associated movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs). Our preliminary results indicate that differences between the externally and internally-driven conditions are present in the cue-locked event-related potentials, but not in the response-locked MRCPs. Our study contributes for a better understanding of the neurophysiological signature of movement-related processes, including both perception and actual motor planning, which are so extensively used in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).

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