Cortical areas for planning sequences before and during movement

Production of rapid movement sequences relies on preparation before (pre-planning) and during (online planning) movement. Here, we compared these processes and asked whether they recruit different cortical areas. Human participants performed three single-finger and three multi-finger sequences in a delayed movement paradigm while undergoing 7T functional MRI. During preparation, primary motor (M1) and somatosensory (S1) areas showed pre-activation of the first movement, even without increases in overall activation. During production, the temporal summation of activity patterns corresponding to constituent fingers explained activity in these areas (M1 and S1). In contrast, the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) and anterior superior parietal lobule (aSPL) showed substantial activation during the preparation (pre-planning) of multi-finger compared to single-finger sequences. These regions (PMd and aSPL) were also more active during production of multi-finger sequences, suggesting that pre- and online planning may recruit the same regions. However, we observed small but robust differences between the two contrasts, suggesting distinct contributions to pre- and online planning. Multivariate analysis revealed sequence-specific representations in both PMd and aSPL, which remained stable across both preparation and production phases. Our analyses show that these areas maintain a sequence-specific representation before and during sequence production, likely guiding the execution-related areas in the production of rapid movement sequences.