Brain structures related to active and passive finger movements in man

Abstract

A PET study was performed in six normal volunteers to elucidate the functional localization of the sensory afferent component during finger movement. Brain activation during the passive movement driven by a servo-motor was compared with that during an auditory-cued active movement which was controlled kinematically in the same way as the passive one. A newly developed device was used for selectively activating proprioception with a minimal contribution from tactile senses. Active movement was associated with activation of multiple areas, including the contralateral primary sensorimotor cortex, premotor cortex, supplementary motor area (SMA), bilateral secondary somatosensory areas and basal ganglia and ipsilateral cerebellum. In contrast, only the contralateral primary and secondary somatosensory areas were activated by the passive movement. It is likely that the contribution of proprioceptive input to the activation of the premotor cortex, SMA, cerebellum and basal ganglia, if any, is small. However, the present results do not rule out the possibility that the cutaneous afferent input or the combination of cutaneous and proprioceptive input participates in the activation of those areas during the active movement.

mano: A Wearable Hand Exoskeleton for Activities of Daily Living and Neurorehabilitation

“…Exoskeleton-induced hand motions led to a spectral power decrease compared to rest. Coherently with previous literature [25], [32], this pattern was mostly centered on electrodes located over the motor cortex. The desynchronization was largely bilateral and, mostly, confined over the µ and low-β frequency bands.…”

“…Such results have been confirmed in invasive [23] and non-invasive [24] studies. It has also been shown that passive hand mobilizations induce similar brain patterns as those observable in active manual tasks [25]. In a first analysis, we studied EEG rhythms during exoskeleton-induced motions in order to evaluate whether the device could elicit such characteristic brain patterns.…”

Cortical activation during executed, imagined, observed, and passive wrist movements in healthy volunteers and stroke patients

“…Such more complex planning processes may be affected by the lesion so that for their fulfillment other (mental and/or neural) strategies relying on further brain areas are required. Activations during PassiveMove, on the other hand, may be driven purely by afferent sensory input (Mima et al, 1999;Weiller et al, 1996). If this input is affected by the lesion, there is no behavioral need for other strategies, since there is no task or behavioral goal like production of a movement.…”

“…Passive movement is thought to activate the sensorimotor system through afferences conveying proprioceptive information not only to sensory but also to motor cortices (Dechaumont-Palacin et al, 2008;Lemon, 1999;Lemon and Porter, 1976;Naito et al, 2002;Terumitsu et al, 2009). Previous studies showed in accordance with these ideas that the brain networks subserving passive movement and overt execution overlap strongly (Carel et al, 2000;Puce et al, 1995;Weiller et al, 1996;Yetkin et al, 1995) (but see Mima et al, 1999). Again, evidence suggests that passive movement can be successfully applied in motor rehabilitation (Dechaumont-Palacin et al, 2008;Hesse et al, 1995;Lewis and Byblow, 2004;Lindberg et al, 2004;Ward et al, 2006) (but see Lotze et al, 2003).…”

Stabilization of bimanual coordination due to active interhemispheric inhibition: a dynamical account

“…While early studies on monkeys revealed activations of various cortical areas, including the contralateral primary motor cortex (M1), premotor cortex (PM1), supplementary motor area (SMA), sensorimotor cortex, as well as interhemispheric cross-talk via the corpus callosum (Gazzaniga 1966;Mark and Sperry 1968;Brinkman Correspondence to: A. and Kuypers 1972;Brinkman 1984;Tanji et al 1988), more recent brain-imaging studies identified further contributions of the bilateral secondary somatosensory areas, the basal ganglia, the ipsilateral cerebellum (Deiber et al 1991;Mima et al 1999), and the primary sensorimotor cortex (Kawashima et al 1994;Okuda et al 1995). In spite of this development, however, the derivation of theoretical models providing an encompassing functional interpretation of such data remains a formidable challenge that will occupy neuroscientists for years to come.…”