A low-power band of neuronal spiking activity dominated by local single units improves the performance of brain–machine interfaces

The large power requirement of current brain–machine interfaces is a major hindrance to their clinical translation. In basic behavioural tasks, the downsampled magnitude of the 300–1,000 Hz band of spiking activity can predict movement similarly to the threshold crossing rate (TCR) at 30 kilo-samples per second. However, the relationship between such a spiking-band power (SBP) and neural activity remains unclear, as does the capability of using the SBP to decode complicated behaviour. By using simulations of recordings of neural activity, here we show that the SBP is dominated by local single-unit spikes with spatial specificity comparable to or better than that of the TCR, and that the SBP correlates better with the firing rates of lower signal-to-noise-ratio units than the TCR. With non-human primates, in an online task involving the one-dimensional decoding of the movement of finger groups and in an offline two-dimensional cursor-control task, the SBP performed equally well or better than the TCR. The SBP may enhance the decoding performance of neural interfaces while enabling substantial cuts in power consumption. The 300–1,000 Hz band of spiking activity, dominated by local single-unit spikes, can enhance the decoding performance of neural interfaces.