An fMRI study of finger tapping in children and adults

Abstract

Functional brain imaging studies have characterized the neural bases of voluntary movement for finger tapping in adults, but equivalent information for children is lacking. When contrasted to adults, one would expect children to have relatively greater activation, reflecting compensation for an underdeveloped motor system combined with less experience in the execution of voluntary movement. To test this hypothesis, we acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data on 17 healthy right-handed children (7.48 ± 0.66 years) and 15 adults (24.9 ± 2.9 years) while they performed an irregularly paced finger-tapping task in response to a visual cue (left- and right-hand examined separately). Whole-brain within-group analyses revealed that finger tapping in either age group and for either hand activated contralateral SM1, SMA, ipsilateral anterior cerebellum, and occipital cortices. We used an ANOVA factorial design to test for main effects of Age Group (children vs adults), Hand (left vs. right), and their interactions. For main effects of Age Group, children showed relatively greater activity in left SM1 (extending into bilateral SMA), and, surprisingly, adults exhibited relatively greater activity in right pre-SMA/SMA (extending into left pre-SMA/SMA), right lateral globus pallidus, left putamen, and right anterior cerebellum. The interaction of Age Group × Hand revealed that while both groups activated right SM1 during left finger tapping and exhibited signal decreases (i.e., below fixation baseline) during right finger tapping, both these responses were attenuated in children relative to adults. These data provide an important foundation by which to study children with motor disorders.

Developmental Changes in Task‐Induced Brain Deactivation in Humans Revealed by a Motor Task

“…The greater contralateral SM1 activation in children than in adults (Fig. ) is in line with previous reports from other unimanual finger tapping tasks (De Guio et al , ; Turesky et al , ). Exact neuronal underpinning of this phenomenon is still unknown; however, the extensive activation in children might reflect their broader index finger representation in the SM1 as their somatotopical representations are likely under development (Nebel et al , ).…”

“…Since a BOLD signal reflects synaptic activity (Logothetis et al , ), the present age‐dependent attenuation of SM1 activation could be associated with an age‐dependent increase in synaptic efficiency in the contralateral (left) M1 hand section through the long‐term use of right hand fingers during routine daily manual tasks. This view is compatible with the idea that greater neuronal resources (e.g., synaptic inputs) are generally required in children performing the same task as adults (De Guio et al , ; Turesky et al , ). If our view is correct, the smaller and weaker BOLD signal in the SM1 during a motor task is not specific to pianists’ and athletes’ brains, but is also observable in typical human development.…”

Local-to-distant development of the cerebrocerebellar sensorimotor network in the typically developing human brain: a functional and diffusion MRI study

“…We may attribute this discrepancy to differences in the task. Both of the present and previous tasks included a timing motor-control component because the tasks consistently asked the participants to generate a movement at a given time [1 Hz in the present study, 2 Hz in De Guio et al ( 2012 ), and either 0.87, 1.11, or 1.54 Hz in the study by Turesky et al ( 2018 )]. On the other hand, our task required the participants to keep controlling the alternating extension–flexion movements of the wrist, while the previous tasks required simple button presses with the index finger (De Guio et al 2012 ) or the thumb (Turesky et al 2018 ).…”

“…For example, it has been demonstrated that, in the human brain, the grey matter maturation of the primary sensorimotor cortex (SM1) occurs relatively earlier in the entire brain, in addition to the occipital visual cortex (Gogtay et al 2004 ). Moreover, it has been demonstrated that 6- to 13-year-old children and adolescents already exhibit activation in the cerebrocerebellar sensorimotor network between the contralateral SM1 and the ipsilateral cerebellar hemisphere (lobules V and VI) when they performed finger-tapping tasks with their right hands, with some quantitative difference from adults (De Guio et al 2012 ; Turesky et al 2018 ). Furthermore, we previously demonstrated that 8- to 11-year-old children recruit the cerebrocerebellar sensorimotor network during kinesthetic (muscle spindle afferent) processing of the right hand (Naito et al 2017 ).…”

Using Mobile EEG to Investigate Alpha and Beta Asymmetries During Hand and Foot Use

“…Mobile EEG systems enable to record brain activity during active movement thus allowing for the measurement of highly ecologically valid neurophysiological signals. Until recently, research on the neural correlates of motor behavior relied mostly on artificial settings investigating, e.g., finger tapping tasks with low ecological validity using stationary EEG or fMRI systems (e.g., Turesky et al, 2018;Schmitz et al, 2019). Mobile EEG systems tackle these shortcomings by allowing for more naturalistic behavior during physiological recordings (Gramann et al, 2014).…”