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Full-Text Articles in Neurosciences
Skill Learning Strengthens Cortical Representations Of Motor Sequences., Tobias Wiestler, Jörn Diedrichsen
Skill Learning Strengthens Cortical Representations Of Motor Sequences., Tobias Wiestler, Jörn Diedrichsen
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Motor-skill learning can be accompanied by both increases and decreases in brain activity. Increases may indicate neural recruitment, while decreases may imply that a region became unimportant or developed a more efficient representation of the skill. These overlapping mechanisms make interpreting learning-related changes of spatially averaged activity difficult. Here we show that motor-skill acquisition is associated with the emergence of highly distinguishable activity patterns for trained movement sequences, in the absence of average activity increases. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants produced either four trained or four untrained finger sequences. Using multivariate pattern analysis, both untrained and trained sequences could …
Two Distinct Ipsilateral Cortical Representations For Individuated Finger Movements., Jörn Diedrichsen, Tobias Wiestler, John W Krakauer
Two Distinct Ipsilateral Cortical Representations For Individuated Finger Movements., Jörn Diedrichsen, Tobias Wiestler, John W Krakauer
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Movements of the upper limb are controlled mostly through the contralateral hemisphere. Although overall activity changes in the ipsilateral motor cortex have been reported, their functional significance remains unclear. Using human functional imaging, we analyzed neural finger representations by studying differences in fine-grained activation patterns for single isometric finger presses. We demonstrate that cortical motor areas encode ipsilateral movements in 2 fundamentally different ways. During unimanual ipsilateral finger presses, primary sensory and motor cortices show, underneath global suppression, finger-specific activity patterns that are nearly identical to those elicited by contralateral mirror-symmetric action. This component vanishes when both motor cortices are …
Acute Alcohol Consumption Impairs Controlled But Not Automatic Processes In A Psychophysical Pointing Paradigm., Kevin Johnston, Brian Timney, Melvyn A Goodale
Acute Alcohol Consumption Impairs Controlled But Not Automatic Processes In A Psychophysical Pointing Paradigm., Kevin Johnston, Brian Timney, Melvyn A Goodale
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Numerous studies have investigated the effects of alcohol consumption on controlled and automatic cognitive processes. Such studies have shown that alcohol impairs performance on tasks requiring conscious, intentional control, while leaving automatic performance relatively intact. Here, we sought to extend these findings to aspects of visuomotor control by investigating the effects of alcohol in a visuomotor pointing paradigm that allowed us to separate the influence of controlled and automatic processes. Six male participants were assigned to an experimental "correction" condition in which they were instructed to point at a visual target as quickly and accurately as possible. On a small …