title: Performance on unimanual and bimanual tapping tasks by patients with lesions of the frontal or temporal lobe.
abstract: The performance of 151 patients with unilateral excisions from either the frontal or the temporal cortex and 60 normal subjects was examined on three motor tasks: (1) simple unimanual tapping; (2) spatially ordered unimanual tapping; and (3) bimanual tapping in which the movements of the two hands were out-of-phase. All patient groups were impaired with both hands on spatially ordered unimanual tapping. In contrast, only those patients with either left or right frontal-lobe lesions performed poorly on the bimanual tapping task. Our findings demonstrate that the frontal cortex plays a critical role in the co-ordination of arm and hand movements, particularly when different movements have to be performed simultaneously.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D004828:Epilepsies, Partial / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000503:physiopathology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery