An fMRI dataset for whole-body somatotopic mapping in humans

Abstract

The somatotopic representation of the body is a well-established organizational principle in the human brain. Classic invasive direct electrical stimulation for somatotopic mapping cannot be used to map the whole-body topographical representation of healthy individuals. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become an indispensable tool for the noninvasive investigation of somatotopic organization of the human brain using voluntary movement tasks. Unfortunately, body movements during fMRI scanning often cause large head motion artifacts. Consequently, there remains a lack of publicly accessible fMRI datasets for whole-body somatotopic mapping. Here, we present public high-resolution fMRI data to map the somatotopic organization based on motor movements in a large cohort of healthy adults (N = 62). In contrast to previous studies that were mostly designed to distinguish few body representations, most body parts are considered, including toe, ankle, leg, finger, wrist, forearm, upper arm, jaw, lip, tongue, and eyes. Moreover, the fMRI data are denoised by combining spatial independent component analysis with manual identification to clean artifacts from head motion associated with body movements.

Females exhibit smaller volumes of brain activation and lower inter-subject variability during motor tasks

“…A total of 62 neurologically intact right-handed young adults (22.76 ± 2.22 years) were used from the Ma et al [2022] database. Of the 62 participants, 34 were female (22.56 ± 2.16 years), and 28 were male (23.00 ± 2.34 years).…”

“…Of the 62 participants, 34 were female (22.56 ± 2.16 years), and 28 were male (23.00 ± 2.34 years). The original study from which these data were collected was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Beijing Normal University [Ma et al, 2022].…”

“…All movements were performed at a self-selected pace between 0.5 and 5 Hz. For further details about the nature of the experiment and motor tasks please review the published dataset manuscript [Ma et al, 2022].…”

“…Using fMRI whole brain somatotopic motor mapping from a previously published and openly available dataset [ [Ma et al, 2022], https://openneuro.org/datasets/ds004044/versions/2.0.3], the current study investigated the differences in cortical activation patterns between females and males during a variety of motor tasks. Based on previous observations of structural differences in the brain between females and males, we hypothesized that across movement tasks, females would exhibit lower variability and smaller volumes of brain activation than males, reflecting more focal neural processing.…”

“…Yet to date little work has systematically considered whether patterns of brain activity indexed with functional MRI differ between females and males. The current study sought to remediate this issue by employing brain somatotopic motor mapping from a previously published [Ma et al, 2022] and openly available dataset to test differences in patterns of functional brain activity associated with 12 voluntary movement patterns in females versus males. We discovered that females exhibited smaller volumes of brain activation across all 12 movement tasks, and lower patterns of variability between female participants in 10 of the 12 movements.…”