Complex animals display bilaterally asymmetric motor behavior, or "motor handedness," often revealed by preferential use of limbs on one side. For example, use of right limbs is dominant in a strong majority of humans. While the mechanisms that establish bilateral asymmetry in motor function are unknown in humans, they appear to be distinct from those for other handedness asymmetries, including...

Inhibitory patterns of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) were applied to pharyngeal motor cortex in order to establish its role in modulating swallowing activity and provide evidence for functionally relevant hemispheric asymmetry. Healthy volunteers underwent single pulse TMS before and for 60 min after differing intensities of 1 Hz rTMS (n = 9, 6 male, 3 female, mean age 34 ...

Background: Scant and equivocal research exists examining the effects of button-pressing on P300. Button-pressing may decrease P300 latency and amplitude. The melding of motor potentials and P300 may also confound studies of P300 topography, such as studies of temporal scalp-area asymmetries in schizophrenia. Method: P300 was measured on button-press and silent-count tasks in control subjects. ...

OBJECTIVE The nigral lesion and the resulting contralateral motor signs of Parkinson's disease (PD) are remarkably asymmetric. This study investigated the prevalence of patients with "wrong-sided" lesions, that is, patients with symptoms on the side ipsilateral to the predominant dopaminergic nigrostriatal deficit. METHODS The analyzed sample included 434 early unmedicated PD patients from th...

Progressive enzymes are macromolecules which hydrolyze ATP while moving unidirectionally along a linear macromolecular “track”. Examples include motor molecules such as myosin, kinesin and dynein, RNA and DNA polymerases, and chaperonins. We propose a specific mechanical model for transduction of phosphate bond energy during ATP hydrolysis into directed motion. This model falls within the class...

Asymmetry in motor patterns is present in a wide variety of animals. Many lateralized behaviors seem to depend on brain asymmetry, as it is the case of different tasks associated to food handling by several bird and mammal species. Here, we analyzed asymmetry in handling behavior of pine cones by red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris). Red squirrels devote most of their daily activity to feeding, thu...

background and objective: parkinson's disease (pd) is a movement disorder with debilitating symptoms. available treatments for pd mainly include its symptomatic relief with no prevention of its progression. due to the iron-chelating and antioxidant effect of phytic acid (pa), this study was conducted to assess its protective effect in 6-hydroxydopamine-induced model of pd in rat. materials and ...