Cerebral Spectral Perturbation during Upper Limb Diagonal Movements

Abstract

While it has been suggested that diagonal rhythmical bilateral movements promote improvement in motor and cognitive functions, no study that we are aware of has actually examined electrophysiological changes during diagonal movements. Therefore, we aimed to study cerebral activity during the performance of diagonal and vertical movements (DM and VM, respectively), through EEG recording focusing on theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands. Following independent component analysis, we computed time-frequency and source localization analysis. We found that (1) increased frontal theta during the initiation of DM was possibly related to the computational effort; (2) a biphasic pattern of frontoparietal alpha/beta modulations was found during VM; and in addition, (3) source localization showed increased frontal theta during DM generated in the middle frontal cortex. We will discuss the current results and their implications in relation to task difficulty, spatial and temporal computation.

Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis

“…especially the visual system [159,160]. Similar to Rimbert et al [5], Marson et al [161] further found post-movement beta rebound [162] between consecutive trials, namely, increased beta activity both in diagonal and vertical movements.…”

“…Only a few recent studies have examined electrophysiological changes during diagonal movements. A rare pioneering study [161] has found increased frontal theta activity during the initiation of diagonal movement, compared to purely vertical movements, which were also studied. The increased frontal theta was possibly due to greater computational effort [86,95,140].…”

“…Rimbert et al [5] reported modulation in sensorimotor beta and theta activity during real movement and motor imagery; Marson et al [161] also found biphasic modulation of alpha activity related to the second part of vertical movements (each movement was composed of two parts, a forward and comeback period, the biphasic response in the comeback period during vertical movement). More specifically, the decreased alpha activity was observed immediately after the start of the comeback period, and, consequently, there was an increase in the same frequency band tied to the end of the movement.…”