Dataset Information

A common network in the left cerebral hemisphere represents planning of tool use pantomimes and familiar intransitive gestures at the hand-independent level.

ABSTRACT: Evidence from neuropsychology and neuroimaging implicates parietal and frontal areas of the left cerebral hemisphere in the representation of skills involving the use of tools and other artifacts. On the basis of neuropsychological data, it has been claimed that 1) independent mechanisms within the left hemisphere may support the representation of these skills (transitive actions) versus meaningful gestures that do not involve manipulating objects (intransitive actions), and 2) both cerebral hemispheres may participate in the representation of intransitive gestures. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to test these hypotheses in 12 healthy adults while they planned and executed tool use pantomimes or intransitive gestures with their dominant right (Exp. 1) or nondominant left (Exp. 2) hands. Even when linguistic processing demands were controlled, planning either type of action was associated with asymmetrical increases in the same regions of left parietal (the intraparietal sulcus, supramarginal gyrus, and caudal superior parietal lobule) and dorsal premotor cortices. Effects were greater for tool use pantomimes, but only when the right hand was involved. Neither group nor individual analyses revealed evidence for greater bilateral activity during intransitive gesture planning. In summary, at the hand-independent level, transitive and intransitive actions are represented in a common, left-lateralized praxis network.

SUBMITTER: Kroliczak G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2742597 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

A common network in the left cerebral hemisphere represents planning of tool use pantomimes and familiar intransitive gestures at the hand-independent level.

Króliczak Gregory G Frey Scott H SH

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) 20090130 10

Evidence from neuropsychology and neuroimaging implicates parietal and frontal areas of the left cerebral hemisphere in the representation of skills involving the use of tools and other artifacts. On the basis of neuropsychological data, it has been claimed that 1) independent mechanisms within the left hemisphere may support the representation of these skills (transitive actions) versus meaningful gestures that do not involve manipulating objects (intransitive actions), and 2) both cerebral hem ...[more]

PMID: 19181695

Similar Datasets

Project description:When pantomiming the use of tools, patients with limb apraxia after left hemisphere stroke (LCVA) produce more spatiotemporal hand action errors with tools associated with conflicting actions for use versus grasp-to-pick-up (e.g., corkscrew) than tools having a single action for both use and grasp (e.g., hammer). There are two possible accounts for this pattern of results. Reduced performance with 'conflict' tools may simply reflect weakened automaticity of use action activation, which is evident only when the use and grasp actions are not redundant. Alternatively, poor use performance may reflect a reduced ability of appropriate tool use actions to compete with task-inappropriate action representations. To address this issue, we developed a Stroop-like experiment in which 21 LCVA and 8 neurotypical participants performed pantomime actions in blocks containing two tools that were similar ("neighbors") in terms of hand action or function, or were unrelated on either dimension. In a congruent condition, they pantomimed the use action associated with the visually presented tool, whereas in an incongruent condition, they pantomimed the use action for the other tool in the block. Relative to controls and other task conditions, LCVA participants showed reductions in hand action errors in incongruent relative to congruent action trials; furthermore, the degree of reduction in this incongruence effect was related to the participants' susceptibility to grasp-on-use conflict in a separate test of pantomime to the sight of tools. Support vector regression lesion-symptom mapping analyses identified the left inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and superior longitudinal fasciculus as core neuroanatomical sites associated with abnormal performance. Collectively, the results indicate that weakened activation of tool use actions in limb apraxia gives rise to reduced ability of these actions to compete for task-appropriate selection when competition arises within single tools (grasp-on-use conflict) as well as between two tools (reduced neighborhood effects).

Dataset Information

A common network in the left cerebral hemisphere represents planning of tool use pantomimes and familiar intransitive gestures at the hand-independent level.

Publications

A common network in the left cerebral hemisphere represents planning of tool use pantomimes and familiar intransitive gestures at the hand-independent level.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets