scholarly journals Different Brain Circuits Underlie Motor and Perceptual Representations of Temporal Intervals

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Domenica Bueti ◽  
Vincent Walsh ◽  
Chris Frith ◽  
Geraint Rees
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Temporal Information ◽  
Extrastriate Cortex ◽  
Reproduction Task ◽  
Temporal Reproduction ◽  
Temporal Intervals ◽  
Temporal Estimation ◽  
The Right

In everyday life, temporal information is used for both perception and action, but whether these two functions reflect the operation of similar or different neural circuits is unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of processing temporal information when either a motor or a perceptual representation is used. Participants viewed two identical sequences of visual stimuli and used the information differently to perform either a temporal reproduction or a temporal estimation task. By comparing brain activity evoked by these tasks and control conditions, we explored commonalities and differences in brain areas involved in reproduction and estimation of temporal intervals. The basal ganglia and the cerebellum were commonly active in both temporal tasks, consistent with suggestions that perception and production of time are subserved by the same mechanisms. However, only in the reproduction task was activity observed in a wider cortical network including the right pre-SMA, left middle frontal gyrus, left premotor cortex, with a more reliable activity in the right inferior parietal cortex, left fusiform gyrus, and the right extrastriate visual area V5/MT. Our findings point to a role for the parietal cortex as an interface between sensory and motor processes and suggest that it may be a key node in translation of temporal information into action. Furthermore, we discuss the potential importance of the extrastriate cortex in processing visual time in the context of recent findings.

scholarly journals Learning the statistics of pain: computational and neural mechanisms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavia Mancini ◽  
Suyi Zhang ◽  
Ben Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Pain Intensity ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
High Intensity ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Statistical Inferences ◽  
Statistical Regularities ◽  
The Right

Abstract Pain invariably changes over time, and these temporal fluctuations are riddled with uncertainty about body safety. In theory, statistical regularities of pain through time contain useful information that can be learned, allowing the brain to generate expectations and inform behaviour. To investigate this, we exposed healthy participants to probabilistic sequences of low and high-intensity electrical stimuli to the left hand, containing sudden changes in stimulus frequencies. We demonstrate that humans can learn to extract these regularities, and explicitly predict the likelihood of forthcoming pain intensities in a manner consistent with optimal Bayesian models with dynamic update of beliefs. We studied brain activity using functional MRI whilst subjects performed the task, which allowed us to dissect the underlying neural correlates of these statistical inferences from their uncertainty and update. We found that the inferred frequency (posterior probability) of high intensity pain correlated with activity in bilateral sensorimotor cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex and right caudate. The uncertainty of statistical inferences of pain was encoded in the right superior parietal cortex. An intrinsic part of this hierarchical Bayesian model is the way that unexpected changes in frequency lead to shift beliefs and update the internal model. This is reflected by the KL divergence between consecutive posterior distributions and associated with brain responses in the premotor cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and posterior parietal cortex. In conclusion, this study extends what is conventionally considered a sensory pain pathway dedicated to process pain intensity, to include the generation of Bayesian internal models of temporal statistics of pain intensity levels in sensorimotor regions, which are updated dynamically through the engagement of premotor, prefrontal and parietal regions.

scholarly journals Severities in persistent mild traumatic brain injury related headache is associated with changes in supraspinal pain modulatory functions

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 174480692110378
Author(s):  
Matthew Flowers ◽  
Albert Leung ◽  
Dawn M Schiehser ◽  
Valerie Metzger-Smith ◽  
Lisa Delano-Wood ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Brain Injury ◽  
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Sensory Response ◽  
Control Group ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mild Headache

Emerging evidence suggests mild traumatic brain injury related headache (MTBI-HA) is a form of neuropathic pain state. Previous supraspinal mechanistic studies indicate patients with MTBI-HA demonstrate a dissociative state with diminished levels of supraspinal prefrontal pain modulatory functions and enhanced supraspinal sensory response to pain in comparison to healthy controls. However, the relationship between supraspinal pain modulatory functional deficit and severity of MTBI-HA is largely unknown. Understanding this relationship may provide enhanced levels of insight about MTBI-HA and facilitate the development of treatments. This study assessed pain related supraspinal resting states among MTBI-HA patients with various headache intensity phenotypes with comparisons to controls via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Resting state fMRI data was analyzed with self-organizing-group-independent-component-analysis in three MTBI-HA intensity groups (mild, moderate, and severe) and one control group (n = 16 per group) within a pre-defined supraspinal pain network based on prior studies. In the mild-headache group, significant increases in supraspinal function were observed in the right premotor cortex (T = 3.53, p < 0.001) and the left premotor cortex (T = 3.99, p < 0.0001) when compared to the control group. In the moderate-headache group, a significant (T = −3.05, p < 0.01) decrease in resting state activity was observed in the left superior parietal cortex when compared to the mild-headache group. In the severe-headache group, significant decreases in resting state supraspinal activities in the right insula (T = −3.46, p < 0.001), right premotor cortex (T = −3.30, p < 0.01), left premotor cortex (T = −3.84, p < 0.001), and left parietal cortex (T = −3.94, p < 0.0001), and an increase in activity in the right secondary somatosensory cortex (T = 4.05, p < 0.0001) were observed when compared to the moderate-headache group. The results of the study suggest that the increase in MTBI-HA severity may be associated with an imbalance in the supraspinal pain network with decline in supraspinal pain modulatory function and enhancement of sensory/pain decoding.

Musical training generalises across modalities and reveals efficient and adaptive mechanisms for judging temporal intervals

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
David Aagten-Murphy ◽  
Giulia Cappagli ◽  
David Burr
Keyword(s):  
Musical Training ◽  
Estimation Errors ◽  
Temporal Precision ◽  
Total Length ◽  
Temporal Reproduction ◽  
Temporal Intervals ◽  
Temporal Estimation ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Regression Towards The Mean ◽  
Task Conditions

Expert musicians are able to accurately and consistently time their actions during a musical performance. We investigated how musical expertise influences the ability to reproduce auditory intervals and how this generalises to vision in a ‘ready-set-go’ paradigm. Subjects reproduced time intervals drawn from distributions varying in total length (176, 352 or 704 ms) or in the number of discrete intervals within the total length (3, 5, 11 or 21 discrete intervals). Overall musicians performed more veridically than non-musicians, and all subjects reproduced auditory-defined intervals more accurately than visually-defined intervals. However non-musicians, particularly with visual intervals, consistently exhibited a substantial and systematic regression towards the mean of the interval. When subjects judged intervals from distributions of longer total length they tended to exhibit more regression towards the mean, while the ability to discriminate between discrete intervals within the distribution had little influence on subject error. These results are consistent with a Bayesian model which minimizes reproduction errors by incorporating a central tendency prior weighted by the subject’s own temporal precision relative to the current intervals distribution (Cicchini et al., 2012; Jazayeri and Shadlen, 2010). Finally a strong correlation was observed between all durations of formal musical training and total reproduction errors in both modalities (accounting for 30% of the variance). Taken together these results demonstrate that formal musical training improves temporal reproduction, and that this improvement transfers from audition to vision. They further demonstrate the flexibility of sensorimotor mechanisms in adapting to different task conditions to minimise temporal estimation errors.

Attentional Modulation of the Emotional Expression Processing Studied with ERPs and sLORETA

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eligiusz Wronka ◽  
Wioleta Walentowska
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Extrastriate Cortex ◽  
Attentional Modulation ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Facial Stimuli ◽  
The Right ◽  
Expression Processing ◽  
The Brain

Recent ERP studies demonstrate that the processing of facial emotional expression can be modulated by attention. The aim of the present study was to investigate the neural correlates of attentional influence on the emotional expression processing at early stages. We recorded ERP responses to facial stimuli containing neutral versus emotional expression in two different conditions. The first task was to discriminate facial expressions, while the second task was to categorize face gender. Enhanced positivity at occipital and occipito-temporal locations between 110 and 170 ms poststimulus was elicited by facial stimuli presented in the expression task when compared to the gender task. This effect temporally overlapped with the P1 and N170 components, which reflect the early stages of face processing. To localize the sources of the brain activity underlying observed attentional modulation, we used Standardized Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography. Enhanced activity within the extrastriate cortex for the expression task was obtained as the reflection of early ERP effect. Additionally, we found stronger activation within the superior temporal and the fusiform gyrus of the right hemisphere in the expression task when compared to the gender task. Our findings undoubtedly confirm that early stages of the emotional expression processing can be modified by top-down attention.

scholarly journals Decoding of Temporal Intervals From Cortical Ensemble Activity

2008 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail A. Lebedev ◽  
Joseph E. O'Doherty ◽  
Miguel A. L. Nicolelis
Keyword(s):  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Distributed Processing ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Hand Movement ◽  
Threshold Value ◽  
Hand Movements ◽  
Neuronal Ensemble ◽  
Temporal Intervals ◽  
The Right ◽  
Ensemble Activity

Neurophysiological, neuroimaging, and lesion studies point to a highly distributed processing of temporal information by cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic networks. However, there are virtually no experimental data on the encoding of behavioral time by simultaneously recorded cortical ensembles. We predicted temporal intervals from the activity of hundreds of neurons recorded in motor and premotor cortex as rhesus monkeys performed self-timed hand movements. During the delay periods, when animals had to estimate temporal intervals and prepare hand movements, neuronal ensemble activity encoded both the time that elapsed from the previous hand movement and the time until the onset of the next. The neurons that were most informative of these temporal intervals increased or decreased their rates throughout the delay until reaching a threshold value, at which point a movement was initiated. Variability in the self-timed delays was explainable by the variability of neuronal rates, but not of the threshold. In addition to predicting temporal intervals, the same neuronal ensemble activity was informative for generating predictions that dissociated the delay periods of the task from the movement periods. Left hemispheric areas were the best source of predictions in one bilaterally implanted monkey overtrained to perform the task with the right hand. However, after that monkey learned to perform the task with the left hand, its left hemisphere continued and the right hemisphere started contributing to the prediction. We suggest that decoding of temporal intervals from bilaterally recorded cortical ensembles could improve the performance of neural prostheses for restoration of motor function.

Lateralization of the Posterior Parietal Cortex for Internal Monitoring of Self- versus Externally Generated Movements

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 1827-1835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenji Ogawa ◽  
Toshio Inui
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Clinical Findings ◽  
Visual Occlusion ◽  
Mouse Cursor ◽  
Posterior Parietal ◽  
Human Motor ◽  
The Right

Internal monitoring or state estimation of movements is essential for human motor control to compensate for inherent delays and noise in sensorimotor loops. Two types of internal estimation of movements exist: self-generated movements, and externally generated movements. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate differences in brain activity for internal monitoring of self- versus externally generated movements during visual occlusion. Participants tracked a sinusoidally moving target with a mouse cursor. On some trials, vision of either target (externally generated) or cursor (self-generated) movement was transiently occluded, during which subjects continued tracking by estimating current position of either the invisible target or cursor on screen. Analysis revealed that both occlusion conditions were associated with increased activity in the presupplementary motor area and decreased activity in the right lateral occipital cortex compared to a control condition with no occlusion. Moreover, the right and left posterior parietal cortex (PPC) showed greater activation during occlusion of target and cursor movements, respectively. This study suggests lateralization of the PPC for internal monitoring of internally versus externally generated movements, fully consistent with previously reported clinical findings.

Functional Interactions during the Retrieval of Conceptual Action Knowledge: An fMRI Study

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 1004-1012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Assmus ◽  
Carsten Giessing ◽  
Peter H. Weiss ◽  
Gereon R. Fink
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Middle Temporal ◽  
Action Knowledge ◽  
The Right ◽  
Left Middle

Impaired retrieval of conceptual knowledge for actions has been associated with lesions of left premotor, left parietal, and left middle temporal areas [Tranel, D., Kemmerer, D., Adolphs, R., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. R. Neural correlates of conceptual knowledge for actions. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 409–432, 2003]. Here we aimed at characterizing the differential contribution of these areas to the retrieval of conceptual knowledge about actions. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), different categories of pictograms (whole-body actions, manipulable and nonmanipulable objects) were presented to healthy subjects. fMRI data were analyzed using SPM2. A conjunction analysis of the neural activations elicited by all pictograms revealed ( p < .05, corrected) a bilateral inferior occipito-temporal neural network with strong activations in the right and left fusiform gyri. Action pictograms contrasted to object pictograms showed differential activation of area MT+, the inferior and superior parietal cortex, and the premotor cortex bilaterally. An analysis of psychophysiological interactions identified contribution-dependent changes in the neural responses when pictograms triggered the retrieval of conceptual action knowledge: Processing of action pictograms specifically enhanced the neural interaction between the right and left fusiform gyri, the right and left middle temporal cortices (MT+), and the left superior and inferior parietal cortex. These results complement and extend previous neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies by showing that knowledge about action concepts results from an increased coupling between areas concerned with semantic processing (fusiform gyrus), movement perception (MT+), and temporospatial movement control (left parietal cortex).

Evidence for the Involvement of the Posterior Parietal Cortex in Coordination of Fingertip Forces for Grasp Stability in Manipulation

2003 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 2978-2986 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Henrik Ehrsson ◽  
Anders Fagergren ◽  
Roland S. Johansson ◽  
Hans Forssberg
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Grip Force ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Load Force ◽  
Force Coordination ◽  
Grasp Stability ◽  
Posterior Parietal ◽  
The Right ◽  
Fingertip Forces

Grasp stability during object manipulation is achieved by the grip forces applied normal to the grasped surfaces increasing and decreasing in phase with increases and decreases of destabilizing load forces applied tangential to the grasped surfaces. This force coordination requires that the CNS anticipates the grip forces that match the requirements imposed by the self-generated load forces. Here, we use functional MRI (fMRI) to study neural correlates of the grip-load force coordination in a grip-load force task in which six healthy humans attempted to lift an immovable test object held between the tips of the right index finger and thumb. The recorded brain activity was compared with the brain activity obtained in two control tasks in which the same pair of digits generated forces with similar time courses and magnitudes; i.e., a grip force task where the subjects only pinched the object and did not apply load forces, and a load force task, in which the subjects applied vertical forces to the object without generating grip forces. Thus neither the load force task nor the grip force task involved coordinated grip-load forces, but together they involved the same grip force and load force output. We found that the grip-load force task was specifically associated with activation of a section of the right intraparietal cortex, which is the first evidence for involvement of the posterior parietal cortex in the sensorimotor control of coordinated grip and load forces in manipulation. We suggest that this area might represents a node in the network of cortical and subcortical regions that implement anticipatory control of fingertip forces for grasp stability.

Integration of Target and Effector Information in the Human Brain During Reach Planning

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M. Beurze ◽  
F. P. de Lange ◽  
I. Toni ◽  
W. P. Medendorp
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Insular Cortex ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Posterior Parietal ◽  
The Right ◽  
Integrative Processing ◽  
Reach Planning

To plan a reaching movement, the brain must integrate information about the location of the target with information about the limb selected for the reach. Here, we applied rapid event-related 3-T fMRI to investigate this process in human subjects ( n = 16) preparing a reach following two successive visual instruction cues. One cue instructed which arm to use; the other cue instructed the location of the reach target. We hypothesized that regions involved in the integration of target and effector information should not only respond to each of the two instruction cues, but should respond more strongly to the second cue due to the added integrative processing to establish the reach plan. We found bilateral regions in the posterior parietal cortex, the premotor cortex, the medial frontal cortex, and the insular cortex to be involved in target–arm integration, as well as the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and an area in the right lateral occipital sulcus to respond in this manner. We further determined the functional properties of these regions in terms of spatial and effector specificity. This showed that the posterior parietal cortex and the dorsal premotor cortex specify both the spatial location of a target and the effector selected for the response. We therefore conclude that these regions are selectively engaged in the neural computations for reach planning, consistent with the results from physiological studies in nonhuman primates.

Decreased corticospinal excitability after subthreshold 1 Hz rTMS over lateral premotor cortex

Neurology ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willibald Gerschlager ◽  
Hartwig R. Siebner ◽  
John C. Rothwell
Keyword(s):  
Motor Cortex ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Motor Evoked Potentials ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Corticospinal Excitability ◽  
First Dorsal Interosseous ◽  
First Dorsal Interosseous Muscle ◽  
The Right ◽  
Hand Area ◽  
Dorsal Interosseous Muscle

Objective: To study whether trains of subthreshold 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over premotor, prefrontal, or parietal cortex can produce changes in excitability of motor cortex that outlast the application of the train.Background: Prolonged 1 Hz rTMS over the motor cortex can suppress the amplitude of motor-evoked potentials (MEP) for several minutes after the end of the train. Because TMS can produce effects not only at the site of stimulation but also at distant sites to which it projects, the authors asked whether prolonged stimulation of sites distant but connected to motor cortex can also lead to lasting changes in MEP.Methods: Eight subjects received 1500 magnetic stimuli given at 1 Hz over the left lateral frontal cortex, the left lateral premotor cortex, the hand area of the left motor cortex, and the left anterior parietal cortex on four separate days. Stimulus intensity was set at 90% active motor threshold. Corticospinal excitability was probed by measuring the amplitude of MEP evoked in the right first dorsal interosseous muscle by single suprathreshold stimuli over the left motor hand area before, during, and after the conditioning trains.Results: rTMS over the left premotor cortex suppressed the amplitude of MEP in the right first dorsal interosseous muscle. The effect was maximized (approximately 50% suppression) after 900 pulses and outlasted the full train of 1500 stimuli for at least 15 minutes. Conditioning rTMS over the other sites did not modify the size of MEP. A control experiment showed that left premotor cortex conditioning had no effect on MEP evoked in the left first dorsal interosseous muscle.Conclusions: Subthreshold 1 Hz rTMS of the left premotor cortex induces a short-lasting inhibition of corticospinal excitability in the hand area of the ipsilateral motor cortex. This may provide a model for studying the functional interaction between premotor and motor cortex in healthy subjects and patients with movement disorders.

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