Repetition-Induced Plasticity of Motor Representations of Action Sounds

Abstract

Action-related sounds are known to increase the excitability of motoneurones within the primary motor cortex (M1), but the role of this auditory input remains unclear. We investigated repetition priming-induced plasticity, which is characteristic of semantic representations, in M1 by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation pulses to the hand area. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were larger while subjects were listening to sounds related versus unrelated to manual actions. Repeated exposure to the same manual-action-related sound yielded a significant decrease in MEPs when right, hand area was stimulated; no repetition effect was observed for manual-action-unrelated sounds. The shared repetition priming characteristics suggest that auditory input to the right primary motor cortex is part of auditory semantic representations.

Priming Gestures with Sounds

“…As in our results, the representations that mediate priming can be easily changed by simple exposure to new associations. This is also consistent with the experiment reported by Bourquin et al (2013) [ 59 ]. They showed that motor evoked potentials of hand muscles increased when participants first listened to sounds of manual actions, but decreased with repeated exposure to the sounds (i.e.…”

Roaring lions and chirruping lemurs: How the brain encodes sound objects in space

“…In particular, action-related environmental sounds have been shown to activate parts of the motor, premotor and prefrontal cortices that are classically associated with the dorsal stream (Lahav et al 2007;Lewis et al 2005;Pizzamiglio et al 2005;Gazzola et al 2006;Hauk et al 2006;Doehrmann et al 2008;De Lucia et al 2009 ). Furthermore, evoked muscular potentials induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation of the motor cortex are significantly increased when participants listen to action-related compared to action-unrelated sounds (Aziz-Zadeh et al 2004;Bourquin et al 2013b). The above findings indicate that brain areas of the dorsal stream are sensitive to the semantic category of auditory stimuli when this category involves motor action.…”

“…Adapted from Cammoun et al (2014). A left hemispheric network supporting a position-linked representation of sound objects, involving the posterior part of the superior and middle temporal gyrus and the posterior part of the inferior frontal cortex: blue (Bourquin et al 2013b). …”

Impact of Cognitive Neuroscience on Stroke Rehabilitation

“…The organization of the ventral stream is highly complex and proceeds in hierarchical steps from the analysis of spectro-temporal features of sounds within the early-stage auditory areas on the supratemporal plane 35 to semantic encoding near the temporal pole. [36][37][38] Specific classes of auditory stimuli involve other areas, in addition to the auditory regions on the temporal cortex, such as environmental sounds related to actions, which coactivate parts of the motor, premotor, and prefrontal cortices 37,[39][40][41] ( Figure 1). The recognition of an environmental sound follows a temporal sequence of processing steps, as demonstrated in a series of electrophysiological studies.…”

“…Организация вентрального потока очень сложна и работает иерар-хически, от первоначального анализа спектрально-временн х особенностей звуков в слуховых областях в супратемпоральной области [35] до семантичес-кого кодирования в полюсе височной доли [36][37][38]. Специфические классы слуховых раздражителей затра-гивают другие области коры головного мозга в допол-нение к слуховым областям височной коры, например звуки окружающего мира одновременно активируют части моторной, премоторной и префронтальной коры [37,[39][40][41] (рис. 1, см.…”