Abstract
The link between the local structure of the primary motor cortex and motor function has been well documented. However, motor function relies on a network of interconnected brain regions and the link between the structural properties characterizing these distributed brain networks and motor function remains poorly understood. Here, we examined whether distributed patterns of brain structure, extending beyond the primary motor cortex can help classify two forms of motor function: corticospinal excitability and intracortical inhibition. To this effect, we recorded high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging scans in 25 healthy volunteers. To measure corticospinal excitability and inhibition in the same volunteers, we recorded motor evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited by single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation and short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI) in a separate session. Support vector machine (SVM) pattern classification was used to identify distributed multi-voxel gray-matter areas, which distinguished subjects who had lower and higher MEPs and SICIs. We found that MEP and SICI classification could be predicted based on a widely distributed, largely non-overlapping pattern of voxels in frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, and cerebellar regions. Thus, structural properties distributed over the brain beyond the primary motor cortex relate to motor function.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health. Virginia López-Alonso was supported by an FPU fellowship from Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Spain. Sook-Lei Liew acknowledges funding by the NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K01HD091283, HD055929). The study utilized the high-performance computational capabilities of the Biowulf Linux cluster at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md. (http://biowulf.nih.gov) We thank Ryan Thompson for assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.
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All authors designed the study; VLA and SLL performed the experiments. ED and VLA analyzed the data. All authors wrote and reviewed the manuscript.
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Dayan, E., López-Alonso, V., Liew, SL. et al. Distributed cortical structural properties contribute to motor cortical excitability and inhibition. Brain Struct Funct 223, 3801–3812 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-018-1722-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-018-1722-1