Intracranial Recordings of Movement-Related Potentials to Voluntary Saccades

Abstract

Movement-related potentials evoked by voluntary and self-initiated horizontal saccades were recorded from subdural electrodes placed over the lateral (premotor and motor cortex) and the mesial (supplementary motor area) surfaces of the frontal lobe, in four patients with intractable focal seizures. An extremely localized bereitschaftspotential showing approximately the same latencies and amplitudes was simultaneously recorded from the frontal eye field and supplementary motor area (SMA). Our data suggest that both regions are equally active prior to saccades and do not support the view that the SMA acts as a supramotor cortex, being activated during the planning of the movement and the primary motor cortex only later on, close to the execution of the movement. In addition, we never observed the spike potential in our intracranial recordings, thus supporting the hypothesis of its extracerebral origin.