Biomedical subjects

Lauren E Sergio

Publications and source records attributed to Lauren E Sergio.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Hemispheric asymmetry in memory-guided pointing during single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation of human parietal cortex.

Dorsal posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been implicated through single-unit recordings, neuroimaging data, and studies of brain-damaged humans in the spatial guidance of reaching and pointing movements. The present study examines the causal effect of single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the left and right dorsal posterior parietal cortex during a memory-guided "reach-to-touch" movement task in six human subjects. Stimulation of the left parietal hemisphere significantly increased endpoint variability, independent of visual field, with no horizontal bias. In contrast, right parietal stimulation did not increase variability, but instead produced a significantly systematic leftward directional shift in pointing (contralateral to stimulation site) in both visual fields. Furthermore, the same lateralized pattern persisted with left-hand movement, suggesting that these aspects of parietal control of pointing movements are spatially fixed. To test whether the right parietal TMS shift occurs in visual or motor coordinates, we trained subjects to point correctly to optically reversed peripheral targets, viewed through a left-right Dove reversing prism. After prism adaptation, the horizontal pointing direction for a given visual target reversed, but the direction of shift during right parietal TMS did not reverse. Taken together, these data suggest that induction of a focal current reveals a hemispheric asymmetry in the early stages of the putative spatial processing in PPC. These results also suggest that a brief TMS pulse modifies the output of the right PPC in motor coordinates downstream from the adapted visuomotor reversal, rather than modifying the upstream visual coordinates of the memory representation.

Adaptation, Physiological↗

PubMed2006

Visuomotor integration is impaired in early stage Alzheimer's disease.

When the sensory information guiding a reach movement is dissociated from the required motor output, humans must integrate rule-based information in order to reach accurately. Here, we examine the accuracy of movements requiring a visuomotor transformation in neurologically healthy elderly subjects and patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease. Participants made sliding finger movements over a clear touch-sensitive screen positioned in three spatial planes to displace a cursor from a central target to one of four peripheral targets viewed on a monitor. These spatial plane conditions were repeated under conditions where the direction of cursor motion was rotated 180 degrees relative to the direction of hand motion. Significant main effects were observed between patient and control groups on reaction time and movement time measures. Also, significant increases in task completion errors were observed in the patient population. Further, performance was affected more by the visual feedback changes relative to the plane location changes. Notably, there were substantial performance deficits observed in the patient population, even those with minimal cognitive deficits. We suggest that the integration of eye and hand information may be impaired in these patients.

Aged↗

PubMed2006

Parietal area 5 activity does not reflect the differential time-course of motor output kinetics during arm-reaching and isometric-force tasks.

Many single-neuron recording studies have examined the degree to which the activity of primary motor cortex (M1) neurons is related to the kinematics and kinetics of various motor tasks. This has not been explored as extensively for arm movement-related neurons in posterior parietal cortex area 5. We recorded the activity of 78 proximal arm-related neurons in area 5 of two monkeys while they used their whole arm to make reaching movements toward eight targets on a horizontal plane against an inertial load or to generate isometric forces at the hand in the same eight horizontal directions. The overall range of measured output forces was similar in the two tasks. The forces increased monotonically in the desired direction in the isometric task. In the movement task, in contrast, they showed a rapid initial increase in the direction of movement, followed by a transient reversal of forces as the hand approached the target. Many task-related area 5 neurons were tuned for the direction of motor output in the tasks, but most area 5 neurons were more strongly active or exclusively active in the movement task than in the isometric task. Furthermore, their activity at either the single cell or population level did not reflect the transient reversal of output forces during movement. In contrast, M1 neuronal activity was typically strong in both tasks and showed task-related changes that reflected the differences in the time course and directionality of force outputs between both tasks, including the transient reversal of forces in the movement task. These results show that area 5 neurons are less strongly related to the time-course of task kinetics than M1 during isometric and arm-movement tasks.

Action Potentials↗

PubMed2005

Motor cortex neural correlates of output kinematics and kinetics during isometric-force and arm-reaching tasks.

We recorded the activity of 132 proximal-arm-related neurons in caudal primary motor cortex (M1) of two monkeys while they generated either isometric forces against a rigid handle or arm movements with a heavy movable handle, in the same eight directions in a horizontal plane. The isometric forces increased in monotonic fashion in the direction of the force target. The forces exerted against the handle in the movement task were more complex, including an initial accelerating force in the direction of movement followed by a transient decelerating force opposite to the direction of movement as the hand approached the target. EMG activity of proximal-arm muscles reflected the difference in task dynamics, showing directional ramplike activity changes in the isometric task and reciprocally tuned "triphasic" patterns in the movement task. The apparent instantaneous directionality of muscle activity, when expressed in hand-centered spatial coordinates, remained relatively stable during the isometric ramps but often showed a large transient shift during deceleration of the arm movements. Single-neuron and population-level activity in M1 showed similar task-dependent changes in temporal pattern and instantaneous directionality. The momentary dissociation of the directionality of neuronal discharge and movement kinematics during deceleration indicated that the activity of many arm-related M1 neurons is not coupled only to the direction and speed of hand motion. These results also demonstrate that population-level signals reflecting the dynamics of motor tasks and of interactions with objects in the environment are available in caudal M1. This task-dynamics signal could greatly enhance the performance capabilities of neuroprosthetic controllers.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

The time course for kinetic versus kinematic planning of goal-directed human motor behavior.

The present psychophysical study compares motor planning during goal-directed reaching movements and isometric spatial force generation. Our objective is to characterize the extent to which the motor system accounts for the biomechanical details of an impending reach. One issue that the nervous system must take into account when transforming a spatial sensory signal into an intrinsic pattern of joint torques is that of limb dynamics, including intersegmental dynamics and inertial anisotropy of the arm. These will act to displace the hand away from a straight path to an object. In theory, if the nervous system accounts for movement-related limb dynamics prior to its initial motor output, early force direction for a movement will differ from an isometric force to the same spatial target. Alternatively, biomechanical details of motor behavior may be implemented into the motor act following its initiation. Limb position and force output at the wrist were recorded while subjects displaced a cursor to targets viewed on a computer monitor. To generate isometric forces, a magnetic brake held a mechanical linkage supporting the arm in place. Subjects were cued to displace the cursor by using either isometric force or limb movement. On random trials, a movement was cued but an isometric force was unexpectedly required. Results show that there is not a significant directional difference in the initial force trajectory when planning a movement versus planning an isometric force. These findings suggest that the motor system may initially use a coarse approximation of movement-related limb dynamics, allowing for the refinement of the motor plan as the movement unfolds.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Baby hands that move to the rhythm of language: hearing babies acquiring sign languages babble silently on the hands.

The "ba, ba, ba" sound universal to babies' babbling around 7 months captures scientific attention because it provides insights into the mechanisms underlying language acquisition and vestiges of its evolutionary origins. Yet the prevailing mystery is what is the biological basis of babbling, with one hypothesis being that it is a non-linguistic motoric activity driven largely by the baby's emerging control over the mouth and jaw, and another being that it is a linguistic activity reflecting the babies' early sensitivity to specific phonetic-syllabic patterns. Two groups of hearing babies were studied over time (ages 6, 10, and 12 months), equal in all developmental respects except for the modality of language input (mouth versus hand): three hearing babies acquiring spoken language (group 1: "speech-exposed") and a rare group of three hearing babies acquiring sign language only, not speech (group 2: "sign-exposed"). Despite this latter group's exposure to sign, the motoric hypothesis would predict similar hand activity to that seen in speech-exposed hearing babies because language acquisition in sign-exposed babies does not involve the mouth. Using innovative quantitative Optotrak 3-D motion-tracking technology, applied here for the first time to study infant language acquisition, we obtained physical measurements similar to a speech spectrogram, but for the hands. Here we discovered that the specific rhythmic frequencies of the hands of the sign-exposed hearing babies differed depending on whether they were producing linguistic activity, which they produced at a low frequency of approximately 1 Hz, versus non-linguistic activity, which they produced at a higher frequency of approximately 2.5 Hz - the identical class of hand activity that the speech-exposed hearing babies produced nearly exclusively. Surprisingly, without benefit of the mouth, hearing sign-exposed babies alone babbled systematically on their hands. We conclude that babbling is fundamentally a linguistic activity and explain why the differentiation between linguistic and non-linguistic hand activity in a single manual modality (one distinct from the human mouth) could only have resulted if all babies are born with a sensitivity to specific rhythmic patterns at the heart of human language and the capacity to use them.

Hand↗

PubMed2004

Brain mechanisms for preparing increasingly complex sensory to motor transformations.

Movements made in response to sensory cues require the brain to transform sensory information into an appropriate motor output. Sensorimotor mappings used in daily life range from direct or "standard" to highly complex. In "nonstandard" sensorimotor tasks, the visual stimulus guiding an action is often not the target of the action. A common example of such a nonstandard mapping is the use of a computer mouse on a horizontal surface to guide an object visible on a vertical monitor. The present study used event-related BOLD fMRI to examine how patterns of brain activity vary as sensorimotor mappings become progressively more complicated. We observed significantly different patterns of cortical activity depending on the level of dissociation between a sensory input and a required motor response. Our results suggest the presence of a functional network generally involved in performing the type of nonstandard sensorimotor tasks examined. This putative network includes regions of the primary motor cortex, medial motor areas, the superior parietal lobule (SPL), and the lateral premotor cortex. The extent of activity in active areas varied depending on the characteristics of the particular sensorimotor mapping used in performing a task. Furthermore, in addition to this putative network, specific task-related areas of activity were observed.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Systematic changes in motor cortex cell activity with arm posture during directional isometric force generation.

We report here the activity of 96 cells in primate primary motor cortex (MI) during exertion of isometric forces at the hand in constant spatial directions, while the hand was at five to nine different spatial locations on a plane. The discharge of nearly all cells varied significantly with both hand location and the direction of isometric force before and during force-ramp generation as well as during static force-hold. In addition, nearly all cells displayed changes in the variation of their activity with force direction at different hand locations. This change in relationship was often expressed in part as a change in the cell's directional tuning at different hand locations. Cell directional tuning tended to shift systematically with hand location even though the direction of static force output at the hand remained constant. These directional effects were less pronounced before the onset of force output than after force onset. Cells also often showed planar modulations of discharge level with hand location. Sixteen proximal arm muscles showed similar effects, reflecting how hand location-dependent biomechanical factors altered their task-related activity. These findings indicate that MI single-cell activity does not covary exclusively with the level and direction of net force output at the hand and provides further evidence that MI contributes to the transformation between extrinsic and intrinsic representations of motor output during isometric force production.

Animals↗