Measuring the integration of sensorimotor information during hand movement
Manu Sutela · Aaltodoc (Aalto University) · 2018
The brain integrates sensorimotor information to guide movement and to maintain a representation of the body. Recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies have revealed that the bodily representation in the brain is prone to modification. In this work, sensorimotor integration was studied using magnetoencephalography (MEG) during an artificially created sensorimotor conflict concerning the position and movement of the hand. The experimental setup used mirrors and a video camera to present subjects with real-time video feed of their hands in place of the real hands. A conflict was created by freezing the video feed while subjects were cued to move their right hand. The aim was to uncover those brain regions that would be activated as a result of the conflict. The conflict evoked activity in several brain regions: In the right hemisphere, activity was observed in the temporoparietal junction, parietal operculum/posterior insula (second somatosensory cortex; S2), and inferior frontal sulcus (PMv). In the left hemisphere, activity was observed in the postcentral gyrus (first somatosensory cortex; S1), parietal operculum (S2), and supramarginal gyrus. The brain regions found in the left hemisphere are part of the somatosensory system. In the right hemisphere, in turn, the brain regions were found in more diverse multisensory areas. These results seem to support earlier findings suggesting right hemisphere dominance in self-recognition.