Details
- ERC sector
- SH4 - The Human Mind and Its Complexity
- ERC subsector
- SH4_1 - Cognitive basis of human development, developmental disorders; comparative cognition
- Project start date
- CUP
- D53D23023030001
- Financial support received
- €57.267,00
Description and purpose
This project develops a multimodal cross-species framework to characterize the parietal cortex (PC) subserving hand actions. WP1 (UNIMI) employs direct electrical stimulation in humans, WP2 (UNITN) applies fMRI with multivariate pattern analysis, and WP3 (UNIPR) performs human–Non-Human Primate (NHP) connectivity-based parcellation. WP4 integrates these data to reveal uniquely human PC regions underlying manual dexterity and flexibility.
Purpose
WP1 will probe parietal control of hand actions by testing how DES during intraoperative tasks alters muscle recruitment, extending mapping to aSPL/aIPL and using high-frequency DES to assess motor output. WP2 will decode spatial information in the PC to test modality-invariant representations of targets. WP3 will deliver local/global rsfMRI-based parcellations in humans and monkeys to identify evolutionary changes in PC functional architecture.
Expected results
WP1–WP2 will integrate DES and fMRI (MVPA) to identify new eloquent PC subsectors and decode hand-action features across planning/execution. WP1–3 and WP2–3 will compare DES/fMRI ROIs with local/global parcellations to reveal task vs spontaneous connectivity. WP4 will merge human and NHP data, providing novel insights into PC organization, uniquely human regions, and the evolutionary basis of manual dexterity.
Achieved results
In humans, the mesial and superior parietal lobules support visuo-motor prehension, while the intraparietal sulcus and inferior parietal lobule contribute to praxis. Somatosensory cortex sectors underlie hand manipulation. A functional-connectivity, cross-species, data-driven analysis supports the hypothesis that human praxis may emerge from macaque cortical sectors controlling hand actions.
Scientific director
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