Ricerc@Sapienza

We have previously shown that in seven drug-resistant epilepsy patients, both reachinggrasping
of objects and the mere observation of those actions did desynchronize
subdural electrocorticographic (ECoG) alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (14–30) rhythms as
a sign of cortical activation in primary somatosensory-motor, lateral premotor and
ventral prefrontal areas (Babiloni et al., 2016a). Furthermore, that desynchronization was
greater during action execution than during its observation. In the present exploratory
study, we reanalyzed those ECoG data to evaluate the proof-of-concept that lagged
linear connectivity (LLC) between primary somatosensory-motor, lateral premotor and
ventral prefrontal areas would be enhanced during the action execution compared to
the mere observation due to a greater flow of visual and somatomotor information.
Results showed that the delta-theta ( prefrontal areas was higher during action execution than during action observation.
Furthermore, the phase of these delta-theta rhythms entrained the local event-related
connectivity of alpha and beta rhythms. It was speculated the existence of a multioscillatory
functional network between high-order frontal motor areas which should be
more involved during the actual reaching-grasping of objects compared to its mere
observation. Future studies in a larger population should cross-validate these preliminary
results.