Abstract
Distal movements of the limbs are predominantly controlled by the contralateral hemisphere. However, functional neuroimaging studies do not unequivocally demonstrate a lateralization of the cerebral activation during hand movements. While some studies show a predominant activation of the contralateral hemisphere, other studies provide evidence for a symmetrically distributed bihemispheric activation. However, the divergent results may also be due to methodological shortcomings. Therefore, the present study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy examines cerebral activation in both hemispheres during motor actions of the right and left hands. Twenty participants performed a flexion/extension task with the right- or left-hand thumb. Cerebral oxygenation changes were recorded from 48 channels over the primary motor, pre-motor, supplementary motor, primary somatosensory cortex, subcentral area, and the supramarginal gyrus of each hemisphere. A consistent increase of cerebral oxygenation was found for oxygenated and for total hemoglobin in the hemisphere contralateral to the moving hand, regardless of the laterality. These findings are in line with previous data from localization [1–3] and brain imaging studies [4–6]. The present data support the proposition that there is no hemispheric specialization for simple distal motor tasks. Both hemispheres are equally activated during movement of the contralateral upper limb.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Penfield W, Boldrey E (1937) Somatic motor and sensory representation in the cerebral cortex of man as studied by electrical stimulation. Brain 60(4):389–443
Penfield W, Rasmussen T (1950) The cerebral cortex of man. A clinical study of localization of function. The Macmillan, New York
Roland PE, Zilles K (1996) Functions and structures of the motor cortices in humans. Curr Opin Neurobiol 6(6):773–781
Sabatini U, Chollet F, Rascol O et al (1993) Effect of side and rate of stimulation on cerebral blood flow changes in motor areas during finger movements in humans. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 13(4):639–645
Rao SM, Binder JR, Bandettini PA et al (1993) Functional magnetic resonance imaging of complex human movements. Neurology 43(11):2311–2318
Pulvermuller F, Lutzenberger W, Preissl H, Birbaumer N (1995) Motor programming in both hemispheres: an EEG study of the human brain. Neurosci Lett 190(1):5–8
Franceschini MA, Fantini S, Thompson JH, Culver JP, Boas DA (2003) Hemodynamic evoked response of the sensorimotor cortex measured noninvasively with near-infrared optical imaging. Psychophysiology 40(4):548–560
Plichta MM, Herrmann MJ, Ehlis AC, Baehne CG, Richter MM, Fallgatter AJ (2006) Event-related visual versus blocked motor task: detection of specific cortical activation patterns with functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Neuropsychobiology 53(2):77–82
Sato T, Ito M, Suto T et al (2007) Time courses of brain activation and their implications for function: a multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy study during finger tapping. Neurosci Res 58(3):297–304
Suto T, Ito M, Uehara T, Ida I, Fukuda M, Mikuni M (2002) Temporal characteristics of cerebral blood volume change in motor and somatosensory cortices revealed by multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy. Int Congr Ser 1232:383–388
Wriessnegger SC, Kurzmann J, Neuper C (2008) Spatio-temporal differences in brain oxygenation between movement execution and imagery: a multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy study. Int J Psychophysiol 67(1):54–63
Lausberg H, Cruz RF, Kita S, Zaidel E, Ptito A (2003) Pantomime to visual presentation of objects: left hand dyspraxia in patients with complete callosotomy. Brain 126(Pt 2):343–360
Haaland KY, Harrington DL (1996) Hemispheric asymmetry of movement. Curr Opin Neurobiol 6(6):796–800
Grafton ST, Hazeltine E, Ivry RB (2002) Motor sequence learning with the nondominant left hand. A PET functional imaging study. Exp Brain Res 146(3):369–378
Haaland KY, Harrington DL, Knight RT (2000) Neural representations of skilled movement. Brain 123(Pt 11):2306–2313
Solodkin A, Hlustik P, Noll DC, Small SL (2001) Lateralization of motor circuits and handedness during finger movements. Eur J Neurol 8(5):425–434
Colebatch JG, Deiber MP, Passingham RE, Friston KJ, Frackowiak RS (1991) Regional cerebral blood flow during voluntary arm and hand movements in human subjects. J Neurophysiol 65(6):1392–1401
Zhu Z, Disbrow EA, Zumer JM, McGonigle DJ, Nagarajan SS (2007) Spatiotemporal integration of tactile information in human somatosensory cortex. BMC Neurosci 8:21
Disbrow E, Roberts T, Krubitzer L (2000) Somatotopic organization of cortical fields in the lateral sulcus of Homo sapiens: evidence for SII and PV. J Comp Neurol 418(1):1–21
Khorrami MS, Faro SH, Seshadri A et al (2011) Functional MRI of sensory motor cortex: comparison between finger-to-thumb and hand squeeze tasks. J Neuroimaging 21(3):236–240
Cope M, Delpy DT, Reynolds EO, Wray S, Wyatt J, van der Zee P (1988) Methods of quantitating cerebral near infrared spectroscopy data. Adv Exp Med Biol 222:183–189
Obrig H, Villringer A (2003) Beyond the visible–imaging the human brain with light. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 23(1):1–18
Jasper HH (1958) Report to the committee on methods and clinical examination in electroencephalography. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol 10:371–375
Singh AK, Okamoto M, Dan H, Jurcak V, Dan I (2005) Spatial registration of multichannel multi-subject fNIRS data to MNI space without MRI. Neuroimage 27(4):842–851
Ye JC, Tak S, Jang KE, Jung J, Jang J (2009) NIRS-SPM: statistical parametric mapping for near-infrared spectroscopy. Neuroimage 44(2):428–447
Jang KE, Tak S, Jung J, Jang J, Jeong Y, Ye JC (2009) Wavelet minimum description length detrending for near-infrared spectroscopy. J Biomed Opt 14(3):034004
Fekete T, Rubin D, Carlson JM, Mujica-Parodi LR (2011) The NIRS Analysis Package: noise reduction and statistical inference. PLoS One 6(9):e24322
Worsley KJ, Friston KJ (1995) Analysis of fMRI time-series revisited–again. Neuroimage 2(3):173–181
Villringer A, Chance B (1997) Non-invasive optical spectroscopy and imaging of human brain function. Trends Neurosci 20(10):435–442
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this paper
Cite this paper
Helmich, I., Rein, R., Niermann, N., Lausberg, H. (2013). Hemispheric Differences of Motor Execution: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study. In: Van Huffel, S., Naulaers, G., Caicedo, A., Bruley, D.F., Harrison, D.K. (eds) Oxygen Transport to Tissue XXXV. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 789. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7411-1_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7411-1_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-7256-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7411-1
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)