No abstract

Several functional imaging studies have shown that the extent of activation and percentage change in cerebral blood flow in the supplementary motor area (SMA) during a bimanual mirror performance of a simple repetitive movement are almost identical to those during a unimanual movement. The aim of this study was to investigate whether this finding was also applicable to a more complex movement. Eight right-handed, healthy volunteers performed unimanually (with their right and left hands) and bimanually (in a mirror fashion) thumb-finger opposition in a nonconsecutive order (index-middle-index-ring-index-little-index-middle ... fingers). The SMA proper was more activated during the bimanual movement than the unimanual movement with either hand. This is in accordance with the hypothesis that bimanual movement, even in a mirror fashion, is more difficult than unimanual movement when the task is complex but not when the task is simple. Pre-SMA was inconsistently activated. The results suggest that the SMA proper plays an active role in executive processing during bimanual mirror performance of complex movements.

The use of a diffuse-projection fiber system which intermittently transmits a reduced intensity laser beam is an effective tool to regulate temperature during LITT using MR temperature measurement.

Magnetic resonance cisternography appears to show great promise for evaluation of patients with neurovascular compression or tumors in and around the basal cisterns; the procedure adds only a small amount of imaging time.

We previously reported how functional activation in the supplementary motor area (SMA) and sensorimotor cortex (SMC) was related to Bimanual coordination in right-handed subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The aim of this study was to investigate this relationship in left-handed subjects and the influence of the handedness on the activation of SMA and SMC. Three kinds of hand movements were