Search results for " Motor"
showing 10 items of 1044 documents
"…The times they aren't a-changin'…" rTMS does not affect basic mechanisms of temporal discrimination: a pilot study with ERPs.
2014
In time processing, the role of different cortical areas is still under investigation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) represent valuable indices of neural timing mechanisms in the millisecond-to-second domain. We used an interference approach by repetitive TMS (rTMS) on ERPs and behavioral performance to investigate the role of different cortical areas in processing basic temporal information. Ten healthy volunteers were requested to decide whether time intervals between two tones (S1-S2, probe interval) were shorter (800 ms), equal to, or longer (1200 ms) than a previously listened 1000-ms interval (target interval) and press different buttons accordingly. This task was performed at the b…
Modulation of spinal cord excitability by subthreshold repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the primary motor cortex in humans.
2001
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) allows the modulation of intra-cortical excitability and may therefore affect the descending control of spinal excitability. We applied rTMS at subthreshold intensity and 1 Hz frequency for 10 min to the left primary motor cortex representation of the flexor carpi radialis muscle (FCR) in 10 subjects and assessed the H and M responses to median nerve stimulation before and after the rTMS. Following rTMS, H wave thresholds significantly reduced by ∼20%. Maximal H but not M wave amplitude significantly increased over the baseline, so that H/M amplitude ratio was increased by 41%. Sham stimulation did not induce any noticeable change in M or …
Lateralized effects of self-induced sadness and happiness on corticospinal excitability.
1997
We studied the changes in excitability of the corticospinal projection evoked by self-induced sad and happy thoughts. Corticospinal excitability was probed using focal, single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied to the optimal scalp position for evoking motor potentials in the contralateral first dorsal interosseus muscle. Fourteen right-handed subjects were studied while counting mentally, thinking sad thoughts, or thinking happy thoughts. In each of these three conditions TMS was applied in each subject randomly, 20 times to the right and 20 times to the left hemisphere. Sad thoughts resulted in a significant facilitation of the motor potentials evoked by left-hemispheri…
High-Frequency Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Motor Cortex of Patients Affected by Migraine With Aura: A Way to Restore Normal Cortical Excitab…
2009
We showed reduced motor intracortical inhibition (ICI) and paradoxical increase of intracortical facilitation (ICF) to 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in patients affected by migraine with aura (MA). In conditions of enhanced excitability due to a reduced inhibition, high-frequency rTMS was found to potentiate intracortical inhibition. Here we explored the conditioning effects of high-frequency priming stimulation of motor cortex with the aim of normalizing excitability reverting paradoxical facilitation by 1 Hz rTMS in MA. Nine patients with MA and nine healthy controls underwent a paired-pulse TMS paradigm to evaluate motor intracortical excitability (ICI and ICF…
The effect of paired associative stimulation on fatigue resistance
2015
Paired associative stimulation (PAS) is a non-invasive stimulation method developed to induce bidirectional changes in the excitability of the cortical projections to the target muscles. However, very few studies have shown an association between changes in motor evoked potentials (MEP) after PAS and behavioral changes in healthy subjects. In the present study we hypothesized that the functional relevance of PAS can be seen during fatiguing exercise, since there is always a central contribution to the development of fatigue. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the motor cortex to measure changes in the MEPs of the soleus muscle before and after PAS. Furthermore, fatigue resis…
Phase-specific modulation of cortical motor output during movement observation.
2001
The effects of different phases of an observed movement on the modulation of cortical motor output were studied by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). A video-clip of a reaching-grasping action was shown and single TMS pulses were delivered during its passive observation, Times of cortical stimulation were related to the phases of the shown movement, locking them to the appearance of specific kinematic landmarks. The amplitude of the motor evoked potentials (MEPs) induced by TMS in the first dorsal interosseus (FDI) muscle was modulated by the amount of the observed finger aperture. The presence of such an effect is consistent with the notion of a mirror neuron system in premo…
Somatotopic organization of the corticospinal tract in the human brainstem: a MRI-based mapping analysis.
2005
To investigate the incompletely understood somatotopical organization of the corticospinal tract in the human brainstem, we performed a voxel-based statistical analysis of standardized magnetic resonance scans of 41 prospectively recruited patients with pyramidal tract dysfunction caused by acute brainstem infarction. Motor hemiparesis was rated clinically and by the investigation of motor evoked potentials to arms and legs. Infarction affected the pons in 85% of cases. We found the greatest level of significance of affected brainstem areas between the pontomesencephalic junction and the mid pons. Lesion location was significantly more dorsal in patients with hemiparesis affecting more prox…
Disrupting SMA activity modulates explicit and implicit emotional responses: an rTMS study.
2014
Supplementary Motor Area (SMA) has been considered as an interface between the emotional/motivational system and motor effector system. Here, we investigated whether it is possible to modulate emotional responses using non-invasive brain stimulation of the SMA. 1Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) trains were applied over the SMA of healthy subjects performing a task requiring to judge the valence and arousal of emotional stimuli. rTMS trains over the SMA increased the perceived valence of emotionally negative visual stimuli, while decreasing the perceived valence of emotionally positive ones. The modulatory effect on emotional valence was specific for stimuli with emotio…
Functional MRI of human primary somatosensory and motor cortex during median nerve stimulation.
1999
Abstract Objectives: Somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) studies suggested that some early cortical SEP components may be generated in the primary motor cortex (M1) rather than the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). Methods: We now used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study activation of S1 and M1 by electrical median nerve stimulation in healthy volunteers. Results: The hand areas of both S1 and M1 showed significant activation (correlation coefficients >0.45) in 7 of 9 subjects (activated volume S1>M1). For comparison, a sequential finger opposition task significantly activated S1 in 7 and M1 in all 9 subjects (activated volume M1>S1). Conclusions: These data show that th…
Quantifying the contribution of arm postural tremor to the outcome of goal-directed pointing task by displacement measures.
2004
A method for quantifying the outcome of goal-directed postural pointing was presented and used for relating the tremor output to the oscillations of single arm landmarks. The displacement of reflective markers placed on shoulder, upper arm, forearm, and hand were measured by an optoelectronic motion capture system in nine subjects holding a laser penlight pointed at a target. The high signal-to-noise ratio of the measured displacement series (from 7:1 for shoulder marker to 30:1 for hand marker) demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed system to carry out tremor analysis. The track of the laser emission on the target, reconstructed from penlight displacements, was studied as the outcome…