Characterization of Low Frequency Oscillations in Simple Hand Movements

Recent studies, based on Local Field Potentials and source activity reconstruction from electroencephalographic (EEG) signals, conducted in animals and healthy individuals reported a power increase in the frequency range of 3-5 Hz over the cortical motor areas that accompanies the preparatory phase of movement. Such low frequency oscillations (LFOs) detected in the EEG of post-stroke patients under the same condition have been reported to show lower magnitude peak. In this work we investigate the LFOs activity in a sample of healthy participants performing the grasping and finger extension tasks with both hands separately. To characterize the LFOs in terms of temporal occurrence, we introduce a single-trial alignment around the LFOs peak. We also compared the tasks to determine if there are differences related to hand dominance and/or the type of task proposed. Our results suggest that there is a jitter in the occurrence of the LFOs power peak and that the side and the type of the experimental task have no influence on the LFOs activity.