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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Temporally stable beta sensorimotor oscillations and cortico–muscular coupling underlie force steadiness

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Funding Information: Data and code are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) at the following link: https://osf.io/4rmex/?view_only=7d17c2334ace4a0d83087bddf2a64a68. Scott Mongold, Thomas Legrand, and Mathieu Bourguignon were supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS, Brussels, Belgium; grant MIS F.4504.21). Harri Piitulainen was supported by the Academy of Finland (grants 266133, 296240, 326988, 327288 and 311877) including “Brain changes across the life-span” profiling funding to University of Jyväskylä. We thank Helge Kainulainen and Ronny Schreiber at Aalto NeuroImaging for providing technical help and the force sensor system for the study. We thank Riitta Hari for her participation in the initial study. Funding Information: Scott Mongold, Thomas Legrand, and Mathieu Bourguignon were supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS, Brussels, Belgium; grant MIS F.4504.21 ). Harri Piitulainen was supported by the Academy of Finland (grants 266133 , 296240, 326988 , 327288 and 311877 ) including “Brain changes across the life-span” profiling funding to University of Jyväskylä. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 As humans, we seamlessly hold objects in our hands, and may even lose consciousness of these objects. This phenomenon raises the unsettled question of the involvement of the cerebral cortex, the core area for voluntary motor control, in dynamically maintaining steady muscle force. To address this issue, we measured magnetoencephalographic brain activity from healthy adults who maintained a steady pinch grip. Using a novel analysis approach, we uncovered fine-grained temporal modulations in the beta sensorimotor brain rhythm and its coupling with muscle activity, with respect to several aspects of muscle force (rate of increase/decrease or plateauing high/low). These modulations preceded changes in force features by ∼40 ms and possessed behavioral relevance, as less salient or absent modulation predicted a more stable force output. These findings have consequences for the existing theories regarding the functional role of cortico-muscular coupling, and suggest that steady muscle contractions are characterized by a stable rather than fluttering involvement of the sensorimotor cortex. Peer reviewed