title: Functional plasticity of sensorimotor representations following short-term immobilization of the dominant versus non-dominant hands.
abstract: The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the functional plasticity of sensorimotor representations for dominant versus non-dominant hands following short-term upper-limb sensorimotor deprivation. All participants were right-handed. A splint was placed either on the right hand or on the left hand of the participants during a brief period of 48 h and was used for the input/output signal restrictions. The participants were divided into 3 groups: right hand immobilization, left hand immobilization and control (without immobilization). The immobilized participants performed the hand laterality task before (pre-test) and immediately after (post-test) splint removal. The pre-/post-test procedure was similar for the control group. The main results showed a significant response time improvement when judging the laterality of hand stimuli in the control group. In contrast, the results showed a weaker response time improvement for the left-hand immobilization group and no significant improvement for the right-hand immobilization group. Overall, these results revealed that immobilization-induced effects were lower for the non-dominant hand and also suggested that 48 h of upper-limb immobilization led to an inter-limb transfer phenomenon regardless of the immobilized hand. The immobilization-induced effects were highlighted by the slowdown of the sensorimotor processes related to manual actions, probably due to an alteration in a general cognitive representation of hand movements.
authors.affiliation: Université de Poitiers, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage, CeRCA, CNRS/UMR 7295, 5 rue Théodore Lefebvre, F-86000 Poitiers, France.
authors.forename: Aurore
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meugnot
authors.affiliation: Université de Poitiers, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage, CeRCA, CNRS/UMR 7295, 5 rue Théodore Lefebvre, F-86000 Poitiers, France. Electronic address: lucette.toussaint@univ-poitiers.fr.
authors.forename: Lucette
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Toussaint
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007103:Immobilization; D008297:Male; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Hand immobilization; Hand laterality; Motor imagery; Sensorimotor representation