Experts in a skill produce movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs) of smaller amplitude and later onset than novices. This may indicate that, following long-term training, experts require less effort to plan motor skill performance. However, no longitudinal evidence exists to support this claim. To address this, EEG was used to study the effect of motor skill training on cortical activity ...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation of the primary motor cortex (M1) is a promising treatment for chronic pain, but its mechanism action remains unclear. Competing dynamic causal models effective connectivity between M1 and medial lateral pain systems suggest direct input into insular, anterior cingulate cortex, parietal operculum. This supports hypothesis that analgesia produced from most likely...

PURPOSE To describe a clinically useful application of functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging--presurgical mapping of the sensory motor cortex--and to validate the results with established physiologic techniques. MATERIALS AND METHODS Functional MR mapping of the sensory motor cortex was performed in two women, aged 24 and 38 years. Both had intractable, simple partial motor seizures due ...

A key unresolved issue for systems neurobiology concerns the neural sites and mechanisms of motor skill learning. Sherrington and colleagues [1] noted nearly 100 years ago that neural mechanisms in the primary motor cortex seemingly exhibit a form of plasticity, based on observations of ‘instability’ in responses evoked by cortical stimulation. Seminal work in the following decades also suggest...

Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a handheld electrified copper coil against the scalp produces a powerful and rapidly oscillating magnetic field, which in turn induces electrical currents in the brain. The amount of electrical energy needed for TMS to induce motor movement (called the motor threshold [MT]), varies widely across individuals. The intensity of TMS is dosed relative t...

The frontal mechanisms of motor intention were studied in dorsal premotor and motor cortex of monkeys making direct reaches to visual targets and online corrections of hand trajectory, whenever a change of the target's location occurred. This study and our previous one of parietal cortex (Archambault et al., 2009) provide a picture on the evolution of motor intention and online control of movem...

Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the primary motor cortex (M1) are highly variable, reflecting physiological fluctuations in corticospinal excitability. Besides changes coil 3D-orientation, MEP variability also depends on several factors related to state stimulated [1,2]. Another factor, poorly investigated so far, is physical brain displacem...