Animals and humans continuously engage in small, spontaneous motor actions, such as blinking, whisking, and postural adjustments ("fidgeting"). These movements are accompanied by changes in neural activity in sensory and motor regions of the brain. The frequency of these motions varies in time, is affected by sensory stimuli, arousal levels, and pathology. These fidgeting behaviors can be entrained by sensory stimuli. Fidgeting behaviors will cause distributed, bilateral functional activation in the 0.01 to 0.1 Hz frequency range that will show up in functional magnetic resonance imaging and wide-field calcium neuroimaging studies, and will contribute to the observed functional connectivity among brain regions. However, despite the large potential of these behaviors to drive brain-wide activity, these fidget-like behaviors are rarely monitored. We argue that studies of spontaneous and evoked brain dynamics in awake animals and humans should closely monitor these fidgeting behaviors. Differences in these fidgeting behaviors due to arousal or pathology will "contaminate" ongoing neural activity, and lead to apparent differences in functional connectivity. Monitoring and accounting for the brain-wide activations by these behaviors is essential during experiments to differentiate fidget-driven activity from internally driven neural dynamics.

中文翻译：

---

抽搐、眨眼和坐立不安：持续神经活动的重要发生器。


动物和人类不断地进行微小的、自发的运动动作，例如眨眼、眨眼和姿势调整（“坐立不安”）。这些运动伴随着大脑感觉和运动区域神经活动的变化。这些运动的频率随时间变化，受到感觉刺激、唤醒水平和病理的影响。这些坐立不安的行为可能是由感官刺激引起的。坐立不安的行为会导致 0.01 至 0.1 Hz 频率范围内的分布式双边功能激活，这将出现在功能磁共振成像和广域钙神经成像研究中，并将有助于观察到的大脑区域之间的功能连接。然而，尽管这些行为具有驱动全脑活动的巨大潜力，但这些坐立不安的行为却很少受到监测。我们认为，对清醒动物和人类自发和诱发的大脑动力学的研究应该密切监测这些坐立不安的行为。由于唤醒或病理而导致的坐立不安行为的差异将“污染”正在进行的神经活动，并导致功能连接的明显差异。在实验过程中，监测和解释这些行为引起的全脑激活至关重要，以区分烦躁驱动的活动和内部驱动的神经动力学。