Biomedical subjects

Katja Biermann-Ruben

Publications and source records attributed to Katja Biermann-Ruben.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Investigating the human mirror neuron system by means of cortical synchronization during the imitation of biological movements.

The human mirror neuron system (MNS) has recently been a major topic of research in cognitive neuroscience. As a very basic reflection of the MNS, human observers are faster at imitating a biological as compared with a non-biological movement. However, it is unclear which cortical areas and their interactions (synchronization) are responsible for this behavioural advantage. We investigated the time course of long-range synchronization within cortical networks during an imitation task in 10 healthy participants by means of whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG). Extending previous work, we conclude that left ventrolateral premotor, bilateral temporal and parietal areas mediate the observed behavioural advantage of biological movements in close interaction with the basal ganglia and other motor areas (cerebellum, sensorimotor cortex). Besides left ventrolateral premotor cortex, we identified the right temporal pole and the posterior parietal cortex as important junctions for the integration of information from different sources in imitation tasks that are controlled for movement (biological vs. non-biological) and that involve a certain amount of spatial orienting of attention. Finally, we also found the basal ganglia to participate at an early stage in the processing of biological movement, possibly by selecting suitable motor programs that match the stimulus.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Right rolandic activation during speech perception in stutterers: a MEG study.

The focus of our magnetoencephalographic (MEG) study was to obtain further insight into the neuronal organization of language processing in stutterers. We recorded neuronal activity of 10 male developmental stutterers and 10 male controls, while they listened to pure tones, to words in order to repeat them, and to sentences in order to either repeat or transform them into passive form. Stimulation with pure tones resulted in similar activation patterns in the two groups, but differences emerged in the more complex auditory language tasks. In the stutterers, the left inferior frontal cortex was activated for a short while from 95 to 145 ms after sentence onset, which was not evident in the controls nor in either group during the word task. In both subject groups, the left rolandic area was activated when listening to the speech stimuli, but in the stutterers, there was an additional activation of the right rolandic area from 315 ms onwards, which was more pronounced in the sentence than word task. Activation of areas typically associated with language production was thus observed also during speech perception both in controls and in stutterers. Previous research on speech production in stutterers has found abnormalities in both the amount and timing of activation in these areas. The present data suggest that activation in the left inferior frontal and right rolandic areas in stutterers differs from that in controls also during speech perception.

Adolescent↗