An assumption-free quantification of neural responses to electrical stimulations.

Background: Connectivity between brain regions provides the fundamental infrastructure for information processing. The standard way to characterize these interactions is to stimulate one site while recording the evoked response from a second site. The average stimulus-triggered response is usually compared to the pre-stimulus activity.

Getting ready to move: transmitted information in the corticospinal pathway during preparation for movement.

Corticospinal interactions are considered to play a key role in executing voluntary movements. Nonetheless several different studies have shown directly and indirectly that these interactions take place long before movement starts, when preparation for forthcoming movements dominates. When motor-related parameters are continuously processed in several premotor cortical sites, segmental circuitry is directly exposed to this processing via descending pathways which originate from these sites in parallel to descending fibers that derive from primary motor cortex.