I Brain activation during executed (EM) and imagined movements (IM) of the right and left hand was studied in 10 healthy right-handed subjects using functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI). Low electromyographic (EMG) activity of the musculi ºexor digitorum superªcialis and high vividness of the imagined movements were trained prior to image acquisition. Regional cerebral activation was measured by fMRI during EM and IM and compared to resting conditions. Anatomically selected regions of interest (ROIs) were marked interactively over the entire brain. In each ROI activated pixels above a t value of 2.45 (p < 0.01) were counted and analyzed. In all subjects the supplementary motor area (SMA), the premotor cortex (PMC), and the primary motor cortex (M1) showed signiªcant activation during both EM and IM; the somatosensory cortex (S1) was signiªcantly activated only during EM. Ipsilateral cerebellar activation was decreased during IM compared to EM. In the cerebellum, IM and EM differed in their foci of maximal activation: Highest ipsilateral activation of the cerebellum was observed in the anterior lobe (Larsell lobule H IV) during EM, whereas a lower maximum was found about 2-cm dorsolateral (Larsell lobule H VII) during IM. The prefrontal and parietal regions revealed no signiªcant changes during both conditions. The results of cortical activity support the hypothesis that motor imagery and motor performance possess similar neural substrates. The differential activation in the cerebellum during EM and IM is in accordance with the assumption that the posterior cerebellum is involved in the inhibition of movement execution during imagination. I

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to determine areas of activation in the cerebellar cortex in 46 human subjects during a series of motor tasks. To reduce the variance due to differences in individual anatomy, a specific transformational procedure for the cerebellum was introduced. The activation areas for movements of lips, tongue, hands, and feet were determined and found to be sharply confined to lobules and sublobules and their sagittal zones in the rostral and caudal spino-cerebellar cortex. There was a clear symmetry mirroring at the midline. The activation mapped as two distinct homunculoid representations. One, a more extended representation, was located upside down in the superior cerebellum, and a second one, doubled and smaller, in the inferior cerebellum. The two representations were remarkably similar to those proposed by Snider and Eldred [1951] five decades ago. In the upper representation, an intralimb somatotopy for the right elbow, wrist, and fingers was revealed. The maps seem to confirm earlier electrophysiological findings of sagittal zones in animals. They differ, however, from micromapping reports on fractured somatotopic maps in the cerebellar cortex of mammals. We assume that the representations that we observed are not solely the result of spatial integration of hemodynamic events underlying the fMRI method and may reflect integration of afferent peripheral and central information in the cerebellar cortex.

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