Differential modulation of corticospinal excitability during haptic sensing of 2-D patterns vs. textures

BMC Neuroscience

Research Article

François Tremblay¹  Sabah Master² 

[1] School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada;School of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Ottawa, K1H 8M5, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada;Élisabeth Bruyère Research Institute, K1N 5C8, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada;School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada;Élisabeth Bruyère Research Institute, K1N 5C8, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada;

关键词: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation;    Maximal Voluntary Contraction;    Corticospinal Excitability;    Pattern Discrimination;    Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Pulse;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2202-11-149

 received in 2010-08-19, accepted in 2010-11-25,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundRecently, we showed a selective enhancement in corticospinal excitability when participants actively discriminated raised 2-D symbols with the index finger. This extra-facilitation likely reflected activation in the premotor and dorsal prefrontal cortices modulating motor cortical activity during attention to haptic sensing. However, this parieto-frontal network appears to be finely modulated depending upon whether haptic sensing is directed towards material or geometric properties. To examine this issue, we contrasted changes in corticospinal excitability when young adults (n = 18) were engaged in either a roughness discrimination on two gratings with different spatial periods, or a 2-D pattern discrimination of the relative offset in the alignment of a row of small circles in the upward or downward direction.ResultsA significant effect of task conditions was detected on motor evoked potential amplitudes, reflecting the observation that corticospinal facilitation was, on average, ~18% greater in the pattern discrimination than in the roughness discrimination.ConclusionsThis differential modulation of corticospinal excitability during haptic sensing of 2-D patterns vs. roughness is consistent with the existence of preferred activation of a visuo-haptic cortical dorsal stream network including frontal motor areas during spatial vs. intensive processing of surface properties in the haptic system.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Master and Tremblay; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010