1. Somatosensory-motor cortex interactions measured using dual-site transcranial magnetic stimulation
- Author
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Anne Weissbach, Matt J. N. Brown, Martje G. Pauly, Michael Vesia, Tobias Bäumer, Julianne Baarbé, Alexander Münchau, Robert Chen, and Carolyn Gunraj
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Paired-pulse TMS ,medicine.medical_treatment ,Biophysics ,Dual-site TMS ,Somatosensory ,Stimulus (physiology) ,Somatosensory system ,Functional Laterality ,050105 experimental psychology ,Dual site ,Lateralization of brain function ,lcsh:RC321-571 ,Young Adult ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Active contraction ,medicine ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Sensorimotor control ,lcsh:Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry ,Electromyography ,Chemistry ,General Neuroscience ,05 social sciences ,Motor Cortex ,Neural Inhibition ,Somatosensory Cortex ,Evoked Potentials, Motor ,Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation ,Transcranial magnetic stimulation ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Motor ,TMS ,Female ,Neurology (clinical) ,Primary motor cortex ,Neuroscience ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Motor cortex - Abstract
Background Dual-site transcranial magnetic stimulation (ds-TMS) is a neurophysiological technique to measure functional connectivity between cortical areas. Objective/Hypothesis To date, no study has used ds-TMS to investigate short intra-hemispheric interactions between the somatosensory areas and primary motor cortex (M1). Methods We examined somatosensory-M1 interactions in the left hemisphere in six experiments using ds-TMS. In Experiment 1 (n = 16), the effects of different conditioning stimulus (CS) intensities on somatosensory-M1 interactions were measured with 1 and 2.5 ms inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs). In Experiment 2 (n = 16), the time-course of somatosensoy-M1 interactions was studied using supra-threshold CS intensity at 6 different ISIs. In Experiment 3 (n = 16), the time-course of short-interval cortical inhibition (SICI) and effects of different CS intensities on SICI were measured similar to Experiments 1 and 2. Experiment 4 (n = 13) examined the effects of active contraction on SICI and somatosensory-M1 inhibition. Experiments 5 and 6 (n = 10) examined the interactions between SAI with either 1 ms SICI or somatosensory-M1 inhibition. Results Experiments 1 and 2 revealed reduced MEP amplitudes when applying somatosensory CS 1 ms prior to M1 TS with 140 and 160% CS intensities. Experiment 3 demonstrated that SICI at 1 and 2.5 ms did not correlate with somatosensory-M1 inhibition. Experiment 4 found that SICI but not somatosensory-M1 inhibition was abolished with active contraction. The results of Experiments 5–6 showed SAI was disinhibited in presence of somatosensory-M1 while SAI was increased in presence of SICI. Conclusion Collectively, the results support the notion that the somatosensory areas inhibit the ipsilateral M1 at very short latencies.
- Published
- 2019