26 Forceful, unilateral contractions modulate corticomotor paths targeting the resting, 27 contralateral hand. However, it is unknown if mirror-viewing of a slowly moving but 28 forcefully contracting hand would additionally affect these paths. Here we examined 29 corticospinal excitability and short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI) of the right30 ipsilateral primary motor cortex (M1) i...

AIM This study aimed to systematically map the severity of mirror movements in both hands in a prospective cohort of children with unilateral cerebral palsy, and to explore the relationship with hand function and brain lesion type. METHOD Seventy-eight children were included (41 males, 37 females; age 9y 4mo, SD 3y 1mo, range 5-15y). Mirror movements were scored during three repetitive tasks ...

We investigated whether perception of hand movement via mirror reflection evokes activation in the motor cortex (M1) contralateral to the non-moving hand (the M1 ipsilateral to the moving hand). Continuous electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 14 participants while they performed unimanual extension-flexion hand movements in direct view and mirror view conditions. We measured the later...

Mirror writing is a striking behaviour that is common in children and can reemerge in adults following brain damage. Skilled deliberate mirror writing has also been reported, but only anecdotally. We provide the first quantitative study of skilled deliberate mirror writing. K.B. can write forward or backward, vertically upright or inverted, with the hands acting alone or simultaneously. K.B. is...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Mirror movements (MM) are involuntary synchronous movements of one limb during voluntary unilateral movements of the opposite limb. We measured MM in stroke and control subjects and evaluated whether MM after stroke are related to motor function. METHODS Twenty-three patients and 16 control subjects were studied. A computerized dynamometer was used during two squeezing ...

Mirror neurons are increasingly recognized as a crucial substrate for many developmental processes, including imitation and social learning. Although there has been considerable progress in describing their function and localization in the primate and adult human brain, we still know little about their ontogeny. The idea that mirror neurons result from Hebbian learning while the child observes/...

Objectives: Mirror therapy is a unique treatment with a touch of modality that is purported to improve the motor function of the affected limb in individuals with hemiplegia. Previous studies have focused on the neuro-physiological factors underlying the mechanism of the clinical effect of this technique. The present study aims to understand the mechanism using the rehabilitation method and neu...

OBJECTIVE To observe the real-time muscle activity of bilateral hands while subjects draw circles under 2 conditions: with and without using Ramachandran's mirror-box. SUBJECTS A total of 24 healthy volunteers. METHODS Subjects drew 4 circles sequentially using their dominant hand with the other hand at rest, both with and without looking at a mirror image. Circles were marked by 8 dots on ...

Is somebody going to hurt us? We draw back. The present study investigates using behavioral measures the interplay between imitative and complementary actions activated while observing female/male hands performing different actions. Female and male participants were required to discriminate the gender of biologically and artificially colored hands that displayed both individual (grasping) and s...

In mirror reflections, visual stimuli in near peripersonal space (e.g., an object in the hand) can project the retinal image of far, extrapersonal stimuli "beyond" the mirror. We studied the interaction of such visual reflections with tactile stimuli in a cross-modal congruency task. We found that visual distractors produce stronger interference on tactile judgments when placed close to the sti...