Activation of non-primary motor areas during a complex finger movement task revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging.
We examined the brain activation induced by a complex finger movement task using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with echo planar imaging (EPI). Imaging planes were set up for the observation of non-primary motor areas. Among five normal males examined, four subjects naive to the task showed activations in contralateral primary and supplementary motor areas and the ipsilateral superior anterior part of the cerebellar hemisphere. Also, the bilateral premotor areas and the contralateral ventrolateral nucleus of thalamus were occasionally activated. No changes were observed in the putamen and globus pallidus. The subject accustomed to the task showed activation in the narrow areas of the contralateral primary motor and supplementary motor and premotor areas but not in the cerebellum. These results suggest that fMRI has nearly the same degree of detectability to that of positron emission tomography (PET) in regard to motor functions.
Department of Neuropsychiatry, Chiba University School of Medicine, Japan.
T
T
Moriyama
N
N
Yamanouchi
K
K
Kodama
A
A
Murakami
S I
SI
Okada
S
S
Noda
N
N
Komatsu
T
T
Sato
T
T
Kusaka
K
K
Kato
D000328:Adult; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology; D005385:Fingers; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000473:pathology* / Q000502:physiology; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity