IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v395y1998i6699d10.1038_26220.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Primary motor cortex is involved in bimanual coordination

Author

Listed:
  • O. Donchin

    (The Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School)

  • A. Gribova

    (The Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School)

  • O. Steinberg

    (The Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School)

  • H. Bergman

    (The Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School)

  • E. Vaadia

    (The Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School)

Abstract

Many voluntary movements involve coordination between the limbs1,2. However, there have been very few attempts to study the neuronal mechanisms that mediate this coordination. Here we have studied the activity of cortical neurons while monkeys performed tasks that required coordination between the two arms. We found that most neurons in the primary motor cortex (MI) show activity specific to bimanual movements (bimanual-related activity), which is strikingly different from the activity of the same neurons during unimanual movements. Moreover, units in the supplementary motor area (SMA; the area of cortex most often associated with bimanual coordination3) showed no more bimanual-related activity than units in MI. Our results challenge the classic view that MI controls the contralateral (opposite) side of the body and that SMA is responsible for the coordination of the arms. Rather, our data suggest that both cortical areas share the control of bilateral coordination.

Suggested Citation

  • O. Donchin & A. Gribova & O. Steinberg & H. Bergman & E. Vaadia, 1998. "Primary motor cortex is involved in bimanual coordination," Nature, Nature, vol. 395(6699), pages 274-278, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:395:y:1998:i:6699:d:10.1038_26220
    DOI: 10.1038/26220
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/26220
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/26220?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maria N Ayala & Denise Y P Henriques, 2018. "Context-dependent concurrent adaptation to static and moving targets," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-23, February.
    2. Tanner C Dixon & Christina M Merrick & Joni D Wallis & Richard B Ivry & Jose M Carmena, 2021. "Hybrid dedicated and distributed coding in PMd/M1 provides separation and interaction of bilateral arm signals," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(11), pages 1-35, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:395:y:1998:i:6699:d:10.1038_26220. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.