Neural mechanisms of motor control

Background

Restoring natural and intuitive motor control is one of the central challenges in neuroprosthetics. Beyond decoding motor intentions, successful prosthetic systems must recreate the seamless interaction between action and sensory feedback that characterizes natural movement. This closed-loop sensorimotor integration is not only essential for precise motor control, but also for the subjective feeling that “I am the one causing this movement”: the sense of agency (Haggard, 2017). A sense of agency is essential for the embodiment and acceptance of prosthetic devices.

Our focus

Our research aims at understanding the neural foundations of sensorimotor integration and sense of agency, and apply these findings to neuroprostheses users. We investigate how the brain integrates motor commands with visual and proprioceptive feedback to support both effective motor control and the sense of agency. In everyday actions, the brain must selectively extract information about the body and its movement from complex visual and proprioceptive input, and dynamically link it to motor signals (Reichenbach et al., 2014). This flexible sensorimotor integration process enables smooth, adaptive control and underlies our sense of agency.

We study the neural mechanisms supporting this process by combining behavioural paradigms, computational modelling and high-temporal-resolution neuroimaging techniques such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) (Bertoni et al., 2025). We use psychophysics inspired behavioural experiments to manipulate and quantify sensorimotor integration and sense of agency. Using computational approaches grounded in Bayesian inference, we model how bottom-up sensory evidence and top-down contextual factors interact to infer self-causation and generate a sense of agency. At the neural level, we focus on how neural oscillations and dynamic functional connectivity coordinate communication between motor/premotor, parietal, and frontal regions during motor control. 

Translationally, we apply these techniques to develop behavioural and neural markers embodiment, sense of agency and sensorimotor integration in neuroprostheses users, and to inform the development of neuroprostheses which feel effortless and natural to control.

References

1. Haggard, P. Sense of agency in the human brain. Nat Rev Neurosci 18, 196–207 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2017.14
2. Reichenbach, A., Franklin, D. W., Zatka-Haas, P., & Diedrichsen, J. (2014). A Dedicated Binding Mechanism for the Visual Control of Movement. Current Biology, 24(7), 780–785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.02.030
3. Bertoni, T., Noel, JP., Bockbrader, M. et al. Pre-movement sensorimotor oscillations shape the sense of agency by gating cortical connectivity. Nat Commun 16, 3594 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58683-9