BCIs That Use Signals Recorded in Parietal or Premotor Cortex

This chapter reviews the roles of the parietal and premotor cortices in motor planning and discusses brain-computer interface (BCI) studies that have focused on these brain areas. BCIs based on recordings from both parietal cortex and premotor cortex have the potential to benefit people with paralysis by providing high-level, goal-related information to drive movement of a computer cursor, a robotic arm, or a prosthesis. Since we have a reasonable understanding of the principles of how movement intentions are represented in the premotor and parietal planning areas, it should be possible to decode them by recording simultaneously and in real time from a large number of neurons.