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Department of Psychology

Staff

Publication details for Dr Cristiana Cavina Pratesi

Cavina-Pratesi, C, Valyear, KF, Culham, JC, Kohler, S, Obhi, SS, Marzi, CA & Goodale, MA (2006). Dissociating arbitrary stimulus-response mapping from movement planning during preparatory period: Evidence from event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Journal Of Neuroscience 26(10): 2704-2713.
  • Publication type: Journal papers: academic
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0270-6474
  • Keywords: fMRI; frontal cortex; superior parietal lobe; motor preparation; S-R mapping; preparatory period; humanSUPPLEMENTARY MOTOR AREA; ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX; PRIMATE FRONTAL-CORTEX; PREMOTOR CORTEX; WORKING-MEMORY; PREFRONTAL CORTEX; PARIETAL CORTEX; COGNIT

Author(s) from Durham

Abstract

In the present study, we aimed to dissociate the neural correlates of
two subprocesses involved in the preparatory period in the context of
arbitrary, prelearned stimulus-response (S-R) associations, namely, S-R
mapping and movement planning (MP). We teased apart these two
subprocesses by comparing three tasks in which the complexity of both
S-R mapping and MP were independently manipulated: simple reaction time
(SRT) task, go/no-go reaction time (GNGRT) task, and choice reaction
time (CRT) task. We found that a more complex S-R mapping, which is the
common element differentiating CRT and GNGRT from SRT, was associated
with higher brain activation in the left superior parietal lobe (SPL).
Conversely, a greater number of planned finger movements, which is the
common difference between CRT and both SRT and GNGRT, was associated
with higher brain activation in a number of frontal areas, including
the left supplementary motor area (SMA), left dorsal premotor cortex
(dPM), and left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The left-hemisphere
dominance for S-R mapping could be related to the fact that arbitrary
S-R mapping is often verbally mediated in humans. Overall, these
results suggest a clear dissociation in the preparatory-set period
between the more abstract role of left SPL in activating the
appropriate S-R associations and the more concrete role played by the
SMA, dPM, and ACC in preparing the required motor programs.