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Reliability of negative BOLD in ipsilateral sensorimotor areas during unimanual task activity

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Abstract

Research using functional magnetic resonance imaging has for numerous years now reported the existence of a negative blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response. Based on accumulating evidence, this negative BOLD signal appears to represent an active inhibition of cortical areas in which it is found during task activity. This particularly important with respect to motor function given that it is fairly well-established that, in younger adults, the ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex exhibits negative BOLD during unimanual movements in fMRI. This interhemispheric suppression of cortical activity may have useful implications for our understanding of both basic motor function and rehabilitation of injury or disease. However, to date, we are aware of no study that has tested the reliability of evoked negative BOLD in ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex in individuals across sessions. The current study employs a unimanual finger opposition task previously shown to evoke negative BOLD in ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex across three sessions. Reliability metrics across sessions indicates that both the magnitude and location of ipsilateral sensorimotor negative BOLD response is relatively stable over each of the three sessions. Moreover, the volume of negative BOLD in ipsilateral cortex was highly correlated with volume of positive BOLD activity in the contralateral primary motor cortex. These findings show that the negative BOLD signal can be reliably evoked in unimanual task paradigms, and that the signal dynamic could represent an active suppression of the ipsilateral sensorimotor cortex originating from the contralateral motor areas.

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Acknowledgments

The contents do not represent the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government. This work was supported by a Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Rehabilitation R&D Center of Excellence #F2182C, Career Development Award Level-2 (KMM) and Senior Research Career Scientist (BC: #B6364L) awards.

Conflict of interest

Keith M. McGregor, Atchar Sudhyadhom, Joe Nocera, Ari Seff, Bruce Crosson, and Andrew J. Butler report no conflicts of interest.

Informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, and the applicable revisions at the time of the investigation. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Visual and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Keith M. McGregor, Joe Nocera, Ari Seff, Bruce Crosson & Andrew J. Butler

  2. Department of Neurology, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Road NE, Decatur, GA, 30033, USA

    Keith M. McGregor, Joe Nocera & Bruce Crosson

  3. Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Atchar Sudhyadhom

  4. Department of Physical Therapy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Andrew J. Butler

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  1. Keith M. McGregor
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Correspondence to Keith M. McGregor.

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McGregor, K.M., Sudhyadhom, A., Nocera, J. et al. Reliability of negative BOLD in ipsilateral sensorimotor areas during unimanual task activity. Brain Imaging and Behavior 9, 245–254 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-014-9302-3

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