Enhancement of Functional Connectivity in Frontal-Parietal Regions After BCI-Actuated Supernumerary Robotic Finger Training

Abstract

The supernumerary robotic finger (SRF) can expand human hand abilities to achieve motor augmentation, and integrate with brain computer interface (BCI) to free the occupation of inherent body degrees of freedom. However, the neuro remodeling mechanisms of brain-actuated SRF training is not clear. In this study, a BCI-actuated SRF was used to investigate the concurrent changes in behavior and brain activity. After 4 weeks BCI-SRF training, the novel sequence operation accuracy rate enhanced by more than 350% compared with innate finger training (IFT). Task-based fMRI showed a significant increase in lateral activation of sensorimotor cortex and found a significant activation change in S1M1_L area. Moreover, BCI-SRF training significantly increase functional connectivity (FC) between S1M1_L and Frontal_Mid_L compared with IFT at post stage. And this FC increase in frontal-parietal is also significant at post vs pre in BCI-SRF group and significantly correlated with the improvement of motor sequence accuracy rate. Our findings provide useful insights into the enhanced human-machine interaction and this efficacy exhibited significant potential for clinical rehabilitation application.