@article{eprints3170,
           pages = {e13420},
          volume = {5},
           month = {February},
            year = {2016},
           title = {A synergy-based hand control is encoded in human motor cortical areas},
          author = {Andrea Leo and Giacomo Handjaras and Matteo Bianchi and Hamal Marino and Marco Gabiccini and Andrea Guidi and Enzo Pasquale Scilingo and Pietro Pietrini and Antonio Bicchi and Marco Santello and Emiliano Ricciardi},
       publisher = {eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd},
         journal = {eLife},
        keywords = {Hand control; Synergies; fMRI; Encoding; Decoding; Motor cortex},
        abstract = {How the human brain controls hand movements to carry out different tasks is still debated. The concept of synergy has been proposed to indicate functional modules that may simplify the control of hand postures by simultaneously recruiting sets of muscles and joints. However, whether and to what extent synergic hand postures are encoded as such at a cortical level remains unknown. Here, we combined kinematic, electromyography, and brain activity measures obtained by functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects performed a variety of movements towards virtual objects. Hand postural information, encoded through kinematic synergies, were represented in cortical areas devoted to hand motor control and successfully discriminated individual grasping movements, significantly outperforming alternative somatotopic or muscle-based models. Importantly, hand postural synergies were predicted by neural activation patterns within primary motor cortex. These findings support a novel cortical organization for hand movement control and open potential applications for brain-computer interfaces and neuroprostheses.},
             url = {http://eprints.imtlucca.it/3170/}
}