Functional specificity in the motor system: Evidence from coupled fMRI and kinematic recordings during letter and digit writing

A few intriguing neuropsychologial studies report dissociations where agraphic patients are severely impaired for writing letters whereas they write digits nearly normally. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) together with graphic tablet recordings, we tested the hypothesis that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human brain mapping 2014-12, Vol.35 (12), p.6077-6087
Main Authors: Longcamp, Marieke, Lagarrigue, Aurélie, Nazarian, Bruno, Roth, Muriel, Anton, Jean-Luc, Alario, Francois-Xavier, Velay, Jean-Luc
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Biomechanical Phenomena
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Cognitive science
domain-specific functional response
Electrodiagnosis. Electric activity recording
Female
fMRI
Handwriting
Humans
Investigative techniques, diagnostic techniques (general aspects)
kinematic parameters
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medical sciences
Nervous system
Neuroscience
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Radiodiagnosis. Nmr imagery. Nmr spectrometry
writing
Young Adult
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Summary:A few intriguing neuropsychologial studies report dissociations where agraphic patients are severely impaired for writing letters whereas they write digits nearly normally. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) together with graphic tablet recordings, we tested the hypothesis that the motor patterns for writing letters are coded in specific regions of the cortex. We found a set of three regions that were more strongly activated when participants wrote letters than when they wrote digits and whose response was not explained by low‐level kinematic features of the graphic movements. Two of these regions (left dorsal premotor cortex and supplementary motor complex) are part of a motor control network. The left premotor activation belongs to what is considered in the literature a key area for handwriting. Another significant activation, likely related to phoneme‐to‐grapheme conversion, was found in the right anterior insula. This constitutes the first neuroimaging evidence of functional specificity derived from experience in the cortical motor system. Hum Brain Mapp 35:6077–6087, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
ISSN:1065-9471
1097-0193
DOI:10.1002/hbm.22606