The role of the left somatosensory cortex in human hand movement

1995 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Okuda ◽  
H. Tanaka ◽  
Y. Tomino ◽  
K. Kawabata ◽  
H. Tachibana ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schaefer ◽  
Anja Kühnel ◽  
Franziska Rumpel ◽  
Matti Gärtner

AbstractPrevious research revealed an active network of brain areas such as insula and anterior cingulate cortex when witnessing somebody else in pain and feeling empathy. But numerous studies also suggested a role of the somatosensory cortices for state and trait empathy. While recent studies highlight the role of the observer’s primary somatosensory cortex when seeing painful or nonpainful touch, the interaction of somatosensory cortex activity with empathy when receiving touch on the own body is unknown. The current study examines the relationship of touch related somatosensory cortex activity with dispositional empathy by employing an fMRI approach. Participants were touched on the palm of the hand either by the hand of an experimenter or by a rubber hand. We found that the BOLD responses in the primary somatosensory cortex were associated with empathy personality traits personal distress and perspective taking. This relationship was observed when participants were touched both with the experimenter’s real hand or a rubber hand. What is the reason for this link between touch perception and trait empathy? We argue that more empathic individuals may express stronger attention both to other’s human perceptions as well as to the own sensations. In this way, higher dispositional empathy levels might enhance tactile processing by top-down processes. We discuss possible implications of these findings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Kropf ◽  
Sabrina K. Syan ◽  
Luciano Minuzzi ◽  
Benicio N. Frey

1990 ◽  
Vol 259 (6) ◽  
pp. H1703-H1708 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. R. Ko ◽  
A. C. Ngai ◽  
H. R. Winn

We have previously demonstrated that rat pial arterioles located on the somatosensory cortex dilated in response to contralateral sciatic nerve stimulation (SNS). We hypothesized that the vasodilation was mediated by adenosine, released as a result of somatosensory cortex activation. To test this hypothesis, we examined the effects of SNS (0.15-0.2 V, 5 ms, 5 Hz for 20 s) on pial arterioles under conditions of altered adenosine availability. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) adenosine was altered by perfusing mock CSF, under a cranial window in anesthetized rats, containing either an adenosine uptake competitor (dipyridamole or inosine) or an adenosine receptor blocker (theophylline). With CSF only, SNS caused pial arterioles (resting diam, 29 +/- 1 micron) to dilate by 38 +/- 10% (peak magnitude) for 32 +/- 2 s. Dipyridamole (10(-6) M) significantly (P less than 0.02) enhanced both the magnitude (to 62 +/- 12%) and duration (to 68 +/- 10 s) of the response. Similarly, inosine (10(-3) M) significantly (P less than 0.02) potentiated the vasodilative response from resting values of 27 +/- 5% and 34.8 +/- 4.1 s to 37 +/- 6% and 89.6 +/- 14.1 s. In contrast, theophylline (5 x 10(-5) M) significantly (P less than 0.001) attenuated arteriolar vasodilation from resting values of 38 +/- 5% and 29.3 +/- 1.2 s to 18 +/- 3% and 22.0 +/- 0.9 s. Neither dipyridamole nor theophylline had a significant effect on neuronal response (sensory-evoked response) recorded from the somatosensory cortex. These results suggest that adenosine is involved in the regulation of pial vasodilation during cerebral cortical activation.


1995 ◽  
Vol 200 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfons Schnitzler ◽  
Riitta Salmelin ◽  
Stephan Salenius ◽  
Veikko Jousmäki ◽  
Riitta Hari

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
Saygin Siddiq Ahmed ◽  
Ahmed R. J. Almusawi ◽  
Bülent Yilmaz ◽  
Nuran Dogru

Abstract. This study introduces a new control method for electromyography (EMG) in a prosthetic hand application with a practical design of the whole system. The hand is controlled by a motor (which regulates a significant part of the hand movement) and a microcontroller board, which is responsible for receiving and analyzing signals acquired by a Myoware muscle device. The Myoware device accepts muscle signals and sends them to the controller. The controller interprets the received signals based on the designed artificial neural network. In this design, the muscle signals are read and saved in a MATLAB system file. After neural network program processing by MATLAB, they are then applied online to the prosthetic hand. The obtained signal, i.e., electromyogram, is programmed to control the motion of the prosthetic hand with similar behavior to a real human hand. The designed system is tested on seven individuals at Gaziantep University. Due to the sufficient signal of the Mayo armband compared to Myoware sensors, Mayo armband muscle is applied in the proposed system. The discussed results have been shown to be satisfactory in the final proposed system. This system was a feasible, useful, and cost-effective solution for the handless or amputated individuals. They have used the system in their day-to-day activities that allowed them to move freely, easily, and comfortably.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Anne Sophie Haar Refskou ◽  
Laura Søvsø Thomasen

The human hand is a complex phenomenon within the contexts of early modern visual and textual culture. Its frequent presence in early modern texts and illustrations - as well as the many different types of described and depicted hands - raises a number of questions as to its functions and significances. In this article, we examine the role of the hand and two of its familiar functions –pointing and touching – against diverse and diverging understandings of human perception and cognition in the period focussing particularly on relations between bodies and minds. Through comparative analyses of cross-over examples from both medicine, manuals and drama – primarily John Bulwer’sChirologia and Chironomia, William Harvey’s de Motu Cordis and extracts from Shakespeare’s plays – we explore the questions implied by hands and their contributions to the knowledge probed and proposed by these texts and illustrations.


1996 ◽  
pp. 329-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Elaine Chapman ◽  
François Tremblay ◽  
Stacey A. Ageranioti-Bélanger

2000 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 1677-1680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Van Donkelaar ◽  
Ji-Hang Lee ◽  
Anthony S. Drew

Recent neurophysiological studies have started to shed some light on the cortical areas that contribute to eye-hand coordination. In the present study we investigated the role of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) in this process in normal, healthy subjects. This was accomplished by delivering single pulses of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the PPC to transiently disrupt the putative contribution of this area to the processing of information related to eye-hand coordination. Subjects made open-loop pointing movements accompanied by saccades of the same required amplitude or by saccades that were substantially larger. Without TMS the hand movement amplitude was influenced by the amplitude of the corresponding saccade; hand movements accompanied by larger saccades were larger than those accompanied by smaller saccades. When TMS was applied over the left PPC just prior to the onset of the saccade, a marked reduction in the saccadic influence on manual motor output was observed. TMS delivered at earlier or later periods during the response had no effect. Taken together, these data suggest that the PPC integrates signals related to saccade amplitude with limb movement information just prior to the onset of the saccade.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (2) ◽  
pp. 1090-1096 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Félix Bastida ◽  
Rocío Pérez-Gómez ◽  
Anna Trofka ◽  
Jianjian Zhu ◽  
Alvaro Rada-Iglesias ◽  
...  

In the tetrapod limb, the digits (fingers or toes) are the elements most subject to morphological diversification in response to functional adaptations. However, despite their functional importance, the mechanisms controlling digit morphology remain poorly understood. Here we have focused on understanding the special morphology of the thumb (digit 1), the acquisition of which was an important adaptation of the human hand. To this end, we have studied the limbs of the Hoxa13 mouse mutant that specifically fail to form digit 1. We show that, consistent with the role of Hoxa13 in Hoxd transcriptional regulation, the expression of Hoxd13 in Hoxa13 mutant limbs does not extend into the presumptive digit 1 territory, which is therefore devoid of distal Hox transcripts, a circumstance that can explain its agenesis. The loss of Hoxd13 expression, exclusively in digit 1 territory, correlates with increased Gli3 repressor activity, a Hoxd negative regulator, resulting from increased Gli3 transcription that, in turn, is due to the release from the negative modulation exerted by Hox13 paralogs on Gli3 regulatory sequences. Our results indicate that Hoxa13 acts hierarchically to initiate the formation of digit 1 by reducing Gli3 transcription and by enabling expansion of the 5′Hoxd second expression phase, thereby establishing anterior−posterior asymmetry in the handplate. Our work uncovers a mutual antagonism between Gli3 and Hox13 paralogs that has important implications for Hox and Gli3 gene regulation in the context of development and evolution.


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