Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 117, Issue 45, Pages 28433-28441Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2017789117
Keywords
brain development; hands; motor cortex; plasticity; actions
Categories
Funding
- Edwin H. Richard and Elisabeth Richard von Matsch Distinguished Professorship in Neurological Diseases
- Societa Scienze Mente Cervello-Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto
- Provincia Autonoma di Trento
- Harvard Provostial postdoctoral fund
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Many parts of the visuomotor system guide daily hand actions, like reaching for and grasping objects. Do these regions depend exclusively on the hand as a specific body part whose movement they guide, or are they organized for the reaching task per se, for any body part used as an effector? To address this question, we conducted a neuroimaging study with people born without upper limbs-individuals with dysplasia-who use the feet to act, as they and typically developed controls performed reaching and grasping actions with their dominant effector. Individuals with dysplasia have no prior experience acting with hands, allowing us to control for hand motor imagery when acting with another effector (i.e., foot). Primary sensorimotor cortices showed selectivity for the hand in controls and foot in individuals with dysplasia. Importantly, we found a preference based on action type (reaching/grasping) regardless of the effector used in the association sensorimotor cortex, in the left intraparietal sulcus and dorsal premotor cortex, as well as in the basal ganglia and anterior cerebellum. These areas also showed differential response patterns between action types for both groups. Intermediate areas along a posterior-anterior gradient in the left dorsal premotor cortex gradually transitioned from selectivity based on the body part to selectivity based on the action type. These findings indicate that some visuomotor association areas are organized based on abstract action functions independent of specific sensorimotor parameters, paralleling sensory featureindependence in visual and auditory cortices in people born blind and deaf. Together, they suggest association cortices across action and perception may support specific computations, abstracted from low-level sensorimotor elements.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available