Spontaneously emerging patterns in human motor cortex code for somatotopic specific movements

Abstract

The role of spontaneous brain activity remains a key question in neuroscience. While prior work shows sensory regions preferentially replay stimulus-specific patterns (e.g., faces in fusiform face area), we investigated whether motor cortex replays reflect somatotopic organization. Using fMRI, we compared resting-state activity to task-evoked patterns during specific movements (finger, toe, tongue). Spontaneous activity in each effector-specific motor subregion (hand, foot, mouth) exhibited greater similarity to task patterns of its corresponding movement than to non-preferred ones. For instance, hand movement patterns replayed more in hand regions than elsewhere. Positive rest-task correlations emerged for preferred movements, while negative correlations characterized non-preferred ones (except toe). This structured somatotopic organization suggests spontaneous activity encodes functional specialization, not just activation strength, mirroring task-evoked representations.