Jäncke
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Psychologisches Institut » Neuropsychologie » Prof. Dr. Lutz Jäncke » Jäncke
Completed research project
| Title / Titel | Short-term and long-term plasticity of the human sensorimotor system | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | With the advent of modern brain imaging methods (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging: fMRI) it is now possible to cortically map various psychological functions in the living human brain. In this project we plan to investigate the activation (indexed by hemodynamic responses) of the cortical motor system during various motor tasks applying modern fMRI techniques with a 3 Tesla Philips-MRI scanner. In several separate functional experiments we will assess long-term and short-term plasticity of the sensorimotor system. To study short-term plasticity we will use sensorimotor learning tasks to uncover the yet not fully understood reorganization of the human motor system during the course of sensorimotor learning. We hypothesize that the effective connectivity between the different motor areas and the relative involvement of these areas change during the course of motor learning. Several main anatomical target regions are of special interest in this context: (1) the primary motor cortex as the core of the cortical motor system; (2) the lateral premotor cortex (PMC) with its ventral and dorsal parts (vPMC and dPMC) as link to higher cognitive functions; (3) the mesial premotor areas (pre-SMA and SMA-proper) and the inferiorly located cingulate motor areas (CMA) because of their putative involvement in motor learning, control of sequential and internally guided movements; and (4) areas in the superior and inferior parietal lobes which serve as relay stations for “cognitive intermediates” (like attention or working memory) as part of the dorsal stream. In order to examine long-term plasticity we will investigate professional pianists and violinists with a long and intensive history of practice with their instrument applying the same sensorimotor tasks as for the experiments designed to study short-term plasticity. In addition, we will also delineate the cortical representation of hands and fingers in order to uncover changed somatotopic maps in highly trained musicians. We hypothesize that professional musicians will use the motor systems for the control of sensorimotor tasks in a different way than non-musicians. Furthermore, we anticipate that pianists and violinists will have expanded somatotopic maps of their hands and fingers compared to nonmusicians. The influence of long-term plasticity will also be studied using in vivo morphometry of the motor system applying conventional morphometry methods (landmark oriented region of interest analysis) but also newly developed voxel-based and deformation-based morphometry methods. Altogether, these studies will allow the quantification and delineation of functional and macrostructural adaptations of the human motor system due to long-term and short-term motor training. This project will be important for the understanding of the functional plasticity of the human motor system. Thus, it will have a direct impact on clinical interventions in situations when the motor system is damaged. Weitere Informationen |
||
| Publications / Publikationen | Schulze, K., Luders, E., & Jäncke, L. (2002). Intermanual transfer in a simple motor task. Cortex, 38, 805-815Jäncke, L. (2002). The case of a left-handed pianist playing a reversed keyboard: A challenge for the neuroscience of music. Neuroreport, 13, 1579-1583 (invited in focus article).Münte, T.F., Altenmüller, E., Jäncke, L. (2002). The musician’s brain as a model for neuroplasticity. Nature Neuroscience Reviews, 3, 473-478.Jäncke,L., Kleinschmidt,A., Mirzazade,S., & Freund,H.-J. (2001). The Sensorimotor Role of Parietal Cortex In Linking the Perception and Creation of Object Shapes: An fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex, 11, 114-121.Lutz,K., Weidner,R., Shah,N.J., & Jäncke,L. (2001). The transfer of a timing pattern to the untrained human hand investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neuroscience Letters, 301(1), 45-48.Amunts,K., Jäncke,L., Mohlberg,H., Steinmetz,H., & Zilles,K. (2000). Interhemispheric asymmetry of the human motor cortex related to handedness and gender. Neuropsychologia, 38(3), 304-312. | ||
| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | fMRI, sensorimotor, motor control, TMS, plasticity, learning, musicians | ||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
|
||
| Other links to external web pages | http://www.snf.ch/E/targetedresearch/centres/currentNCCR/Pages/_xc_nfsneuro.aspx?mode=print | ||
| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
SNF (Personen- und Projektförderung), SNF (Programm NFS/NCCR) |
||
| In collaboration with / In Zusammenarbeit mit |
|
||
| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Nov 2002 to Oct 2010 |