Spontaneous neural activity has been shown to preserve the inter-regional structure of cortical activity evoked by a task. It is unclear, however, whether patterns of spontaneous activity within a cortical region comprise representations associated with specific behaviors or mental states. The current study investigated the hypothesis that spontaneous neural activity in human motor cortex represents motor responses that commonly occur in daily life. To test this hypothesis 15 healthy participants were scanned in a 3T fMRI scanner while performing four simple hand movements differing by their daily life relevance, and while not performing any specific task (resting-state scans). Using the task data, we identified cortical patterns in a motor ROI corresponding to the different hand movements. These task-defined patterns were compared to spontaneous cortical activity patterns in the same motor ROI. The results indicated a higher similarity of the spontaneous patterns to the most common hand movement than to the least common hand movement. This finding provides the first evidence that spontaneous activity in human cortex forms fine-scale, patterned representations associated with behaviors that frequently occur in daily life.

中文翻译：

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行为相关的图案在人类运动皮层中自发出现

研究表明，自发性神经活动可保持某项任务诱发的皮层活动的区域间结构。然而，尚不清楚皮质区域内的自发活动模式是否包括与特定行为或精神​​状态相关的表征。当前的研究调查了以下假设，即人类运动皮层的自发神经活动代表了日常生活中常见的运动反应。为了验证这一假设，在3T fMRI扫描仪中对15名健康参与者进行了扫描，同时进行了四次简单的手部动作，这些动作因其日常生活的相关性而有所不同，而未执行任何特定的任务（静止状态扫描）。使用任务数据，我们确定了与不同手部运动相对应的运动ROI中的皮质模式。将这些任务定义的模式与相同运动ROI下的自发皮层活动模式进行比较。结果表明，自发模式与最常见手部动作的相似性高于与最不常见手部动作的相似性。这一发现提供了第一个证据，证明人类皮质中的自发活动形成了与日常生活中频繁发生的行为相关的精细，有图案的表征。