Nature's Shell Game and Isaac Newton's Query number 15 - A Time-Resolved Reappraisal of the Newtonian Concept of Sensorium Significance for Noninvasive Signal Recovery Applications in Humans

摘要

The manner in which the right and left cortices of humans are connected has been clarified only recently. Contrary to the Newtonian speculation (Opticks, 1704, Query 15), conscious appreciation of external affairs occurs in one hemisphere (i.e. the command center, major hemisphere, or the hemisphere of action); the left in ～ 80 percent of the population and the right in the remainder. Behavioral (self-declared) handedness is but a statistical reflection of the above-mentioned neural laterality. Using clinical and chronometric data, it has been shown that intention to move a body part arise from the major hemisphere and that moving the nondominant side of the body requires participation of the corpus callosum to carry those impulses to the minor hemisphere for execution of the same. Sensing from the non-dominant side is also a bi-hemispherical event with the signals trafficking in the opposite direction. Thus, measuring the simple reaction time is the most secure and noninvasive way of lateralizing the major hemisphere for the purpose of sampling signals from the scalp in paradigms employing brain-computer interface (BCI).