The role of the left primary motor cortex in apraxia.

Background: Apraxia is a motor-cognitive disorder that primary sensorimotor deficits cannot solely explain. Previous research in stroke patients has focused on damage to the fronto-parietal praxis networks in the left hemisphere (LH) as the cause of apraxic deficits. In contrast, the potential role of the (left) primary motor cortex (M1) has largely been neglected.

Age- and sex-related changes in motor functions: a comprehensive assessment and component analysis.

Age-related motor impairments often cause caregiver dependency or even hospitalization. However, comprehensive investigations of the different motor abilities and the changes thereof across the adult lifespan remain sparse. We, therefore, extensively assessed essential basic and complex motor functions in 444 healthy adults covering a wide age range (range 21 to 88 years).

Temporal binding and sense of agency in major depression.

Background: Alterations in the experience of controlling oneself and one's environment are of high relevance to understanding the psychopathology of depression. This study investigated the relationship between Temporal Binding for action-event sequences, sense of agency, self-efficacy and symptom severity in Major Depressive Disorder.

Method: We employed the Sense of Agency Scale (SoAS) and the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) to assess explicit Sense of Agency and self-efficacy in a group of 42 persons diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) [20 identifying as female, 19 as male; mean age 37.

Cortical Tau Aggregation Patterns associated with Apraxia in Alzheimer's Disease.

Objectives: Apraxia is a core feature of Alzheimer's disease, but the pathomechanism of this characteristic symptom is not well understood. Here, we systematically investigated apraxia profiles in a well-defined group of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD; N=32) who additionally underwent PET imaging with the second-generation tau PET tracer [18F]PI-2620. We hypothesized that specific patterns of tau pathology might be related to apraxic deficits.

Neural correlates of confidence during decision formation in a perceptual judgment task.

When we make a decision, we also estimate the probability that our choice is correct or accurate. This probability estimate is termed our degree of decision confidence. Recent work has reported event-related potential (ERP) correlates of confidence both during decision formation (the centro-parietal positivity component; CPP) and after a decision has been made (the error positivity component; Pe).

Preoperative motor deficits and depressive symptoms predict quality of life in patients with Parkinson's disease at different time points after surgery for subthalamic stimulation: a retrospective study.

Background: While subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) improves the quality of life (QoL) of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), the clinical parameters that predict this improvement remain debated. This retrospective study explored whether preoperative motor, cognitive, and affective parameters predict QoL or its components at 6 and 12 months after STN-DBS surgery.

Methods: QoL was assessed with the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39 (PDQ-39) before (baseline), at 6 months (N = 90) and 12 months (N = 63) after STN-DBS surgery.

Affection of Motor Network Regions by Tau Pathology Across the Alzheimer's Disease Spectrum.

Stereotypical isocortical tau protein pathology along the Braak stages has been described as an instigator of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Less is known about tau pathology in motor regions, although higher-order motor deficits such as praxis dysfunction are part of the clinical description. Here, we examined how tau pathology in cytoarchitectonically mapped regions of the primary and higher-order motor network in comparison to primary visual and sensory regions varies across the clinical spectrum of AD.

Increased functional connectivity between the auditory cortex and the frontoparietal network compensates for impaired visuomotor transformation after early auditory deprivation.

Early auditory deprivation leads to a reorganization of large-scale brain networks involving and extending beyond the auditory system. It has been documented that visuomotor transformation is impaired after early deafness, associated with a hyper-crosstalk between the task-critical frontoparietal network and the default-mode network. However, it remains unknown whether and how the reorganized large-scale brain networks involving the auditory cortex contribute to impaired visuomotor transformation after early deafness.

Association of Circumscribed Subcortical Gray and White Matter Lesions With Apraxic Deficits in Patients With Left Hemisphere Stroke.

Background And Objectives: Apraxia is commonly attributed to left hemisphere (LH) lesions of the cortical fronto-temporo-parietal praxis networks or white matter lesions causing disconnections between cortical nodes. By contrast, the contribution of lesions to the subcortical gray matter, that is, basal ganglia or thalamus, to apraxic deficits remains controversial. Here, we investigate whether damage to these subcortical gray matter structures (i.

Tool mastering today - an interdisciplinary perspective.

Tools have coined human life, living conditions, and culture. Recognizing the cognitive architecture underlying tool use would allow us to comprehend its evolution, development, and physiological basis. However, the cognitive underpinnings of tool mastering remain little understood in spite of long-time research in neuroscientific, psychological, behavioral and technological fields.

Gesture meaning modulates the neural correlates of effector-specific imitation deficits in left hemisphere stroke.

Background: Previous studies on left hemisphere (LH) stroke patients reported effector-specific (hand, fingers, bucco-facial) differences in imitation performance. Furthermore, imitation performance differed between meaningless (ML) and meaningful (MF) gestures. Recent work suggests that a gesture's meaning impacts the body-part specificity of gesture imitation.

The relationship between response dynamics and the formation of confidence varies across the lifespan.

Accurate metacognitive judgments, such as forming a confidence judgment, are crucial for goal-directed behavior but decline with older age. Besides changes in the sensory processing of stimulus features, there might also be changes in the motoric aspects of giving responses that account for age-related changes in confidence. In order to assess the association between confidence and response parameters across the adult lifespan, we measured response times and peak forces in a four-choice flanker task with subsequent confidence judgments.

Different facets of object-use pantomime: online TMS evidence on the role of the supramarginal gyrus.

Background: A key question in apraxia research is which specific cognitive processes in pantomiming the parietal cortex supports. The manipulation-based hypothesis and the technical-reasoning hypothesis ascribe different roles to the inferior parietal lobule (IPL).

Objective: We elucidated the role of the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG, i.

Temporal binding of social events less pronounced in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Differences in predictive processing are considered amongst the prime candidates for mechanisms underlying different symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A particularly valuable paradigm to investigate these processes is temporal binding (TB) assessed through time estimation tasks. In this study, we report on two separate experiments using a TB task designed to assess the influence of top-down social information on action event related TB.

Imaging the neural underpinnings of freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease.

Freezing of gait (FoG) is a paroxysmal and sporadic gait impairment that severely affects PD patients' quality of life. This review summarizes current neuroimaging investigations that characterize the neural underpinnings of FoG in PD. The review presents and discusses the latest advances across multiple methodological domains that shed light on structural correlates, connectivity changes, and activation patterns associated with the different pathophysiological models of FoG in PD.

Neuropsychological Evidence for a Motor Working Memory Subsystem Related to Apraxia.

Recent evidence in healthy participants suggests that a motor subcomponent of working memory (mWM) may exist. We investigated whether this mWM is impaired in patients with a motor-dominant left hemisphere (LH) stroke and apraxia. Furthermore, we hypothesized that a deficient mWM contributes to deficits in motor cognition, that is, apraxia, in LH stroke.

Impaired body-centred sensorimotor transformations in congenitally deaf people.

Congenital deafness modifies an individual's daily interaction with the environment and alters the fundamental perception of the external world. How congenital deafness shapes the interface between the internal and external worlds remains poorly understood. To interact efficiently with the external world, visuospatial representations of external target objects need to be effectively transformed into sensorimotor representations with reference to the body.

Intranasal oxytocin attenuates the effects of monetary feedback on procedural learning.

Procedural learning is a vital brain function that allows us to acquire motor skills during development or re-learn them after lesions affecting the motor system. Procedural learning can be improved by feedback of different valence, e.g.

Distinct cognitive components and their neural substrates underlying praxis and language deficits following left hemisphere stroke.

Apraxia is characterised by multiple deficits of higher motor functions, primarily caused by left hemisphere (LH) lesions to parietal-frontal praxis networks. While previous neuropsychological and lesion studies tried to relate the various apraxic deficits to specific lesion sites, a comprehensive analysis of the different apraxia profiles and the related (impaired) motor-cognitive processes as well as their differential neural substrates in LH stroke is lacking. To reveal the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the different patterns of praxis and (related) language deficits, we applied principal component analysis (PCA) to the scores of sub-acute LH stroke patients (n = 91) in several tests of apraxia and aphasia.

Neural correlates of metacognition across the adult lifespan.

Metacognitive accuracy describes the degree of overlap between the subjective perception of one's decision accuracy (i.e. confidence) and objectively observed performance.

Temporal binding is enhanced in social contexts.

Temporal binding (TB) refers to an underestimation of time intervals between two events, most commonly for actions and their effects. This temporal contraction is measurable for both perceived changes in social stimuli such as faces, as well as for interactions with a partner. We investigated TB in two separate experiments to uncover the individual influences of (i) participants' belief in an interaction with a human partner (as compared to a computer), and (ii) a face-like stimulus versus an abstract stimulus mediating the interaction.

Hand preference for the visual and auditory modalities in humans.

The sensory dominance effect refers to the phenomenon that one sensory modality more frequently receives preferential processing (and eventually dominates consciousness and behavior) over and above other modalities. On the other hand, hand dominance is an innate aspect of the human motor system. To investigate how the sensory dominance effect interacts with hand dominance, we applied the adapted Colavita paradigm and recruited a large cohort of healthy right-handed participants (n = 119).

Verum versus sham tDCS in the treatment of stroke-induced apraxia: study protocol of the randomized controlled trial RAdiCS -"Rehabilitating (stroke-induced) Apraxia with direct Current Stimulation".

Introduction: Stroke is the leading cause of acquired disability in western societies. (Motor) cognitive deficits like apraxia significantly contribute to disability after stroke, harming activities of daily living and rehabilitation outcome. To date, efficient therapeutic options for apraxia remain sparse.