VOLUME LXXVII | MAY 2023

Bridging the Gap: Understanding the Premotor Cortex’s Role in Action Preparation

Imagine the premotor cortex as the master conductor of your brain’s motor symphony. Situated on the surface of your brain, this region is responsible for a wide range of motor behaviors, such as planning actions, sequencing movements, and even imagining movements. By studying the interactions between transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and single neuron research, scientists are gaining insights into how the premotor cortex works. These experiments involve stimulating the premotor cortex with TMS and observing how it affects single neurons to uncover the computational processes that underlie voluntary actions. The findings suggest that the premotor cortex plays a fundamental role in orchestrating our voluntary movements and may serve as a vital link between our cognitive decision-making and physical execution. To dive deeper into this fascinating research and learn more about how our brains prepare for action, check out the full article!

Amir Khan

Amir is a Pakistani-Canadian neuroengineer in Toronto, developing brain-computer interfaces to enhance learning. As a volunteer author, he shares insights on how technology can amplify cognitive abilities, drawing from his diverse South Asian-Canadian perspective.

The premotor cortex is a region on the superolateral surface of the brain encompassing the anterior lip of the precentral gyrus, the posterior portion of the middle frontal gyrus, and superior frontal gyrus, corresponding to part of Brodmann’s cytoarchitectonic area 6 [1] (Box 1). The PMd is implicated in a wide array of motor behaviours, including action preparation [2], motor sequencing [3], internally generated movements [4], motor imagery [5], and more [6]. The activation of PMd across such an array of tasks with wildly varying cognitive demands and movement kinematics, along with broad effects of damage to PMd on motor function [7–9], suggests that PMd performs foundational computations, which underpin voluntary action [2].
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