Highlights
- •Left PPC anodal tDCS deteriorates right hand motor anticipation.
- •Left PPC cathodal tDCS facilitates right hand motor anticipation.
- •These effects cannot be explained by altered excitability of the primary motor cortex.
- •Left PPC represents a core component for anticipatory motor control of the right hand.
Abstract
Background
Flexible and precisely timed motor control is based on functional interaction within
a cortico-subcortical network. The left posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is supposed
to be crucial for anticipatory motor control by sensorimotor feedback matching.
Objective
Intention of the present study was to disentangle the specific relevance of the left
PPC for anticipatory motor control using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)
since a causal link remains to be established.
Methods
Anodal vs. cathodal tDCS was applied for 10 min over the left PPC in 16 right-handed
subjects in separate sessions. Left primary motor cortex (M1) tDCS served as control
condition and was applied in additional 15 subjects. Prior to and immediately after
tDCS, subjects performed three tasks demanding temporal motor precision with respect
to an auditory stimulus: sensorimotor synchronization as measure of anticipatory motor
control, interval reproduction and simple reaction.
Results
Left PPC tDCS affected right hand synchronization but not simple reaction times. Motor
anticipation was deteriorated by anodal tDCS, while cathodal tDCS yielded the reverse
effect. The variability of interval reproduction was increased by anodal left M1 tDCS,
whereas it was reduced by cathodal tDCS. No significant effects on simple reaction
times were found.
Conclusion
The present data support the hypothesis that left PPC is causally involved in right
hand anticipatory motor control exceeding pure motor implementation as processed by
M1 and possibly indicating subjective timing. Since M1 tDCS particularly affects motor
implementation, the observed PPC effects are not likely to be explained by alterations
of motor-cortical excitability.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 11, 2014
Accepted:
August 6,
2014
Received in revised form:
August 6,
2014
Received:
April 29,
2014
Footnotes
This work was supported by a research grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; PO806/3-1 to BP).
Identification
Copyright
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
