Neurophysiological Analysis of Intermanual Transfer in Motor Learning

In this study, MEPs were induced during the subject’s imaged kinesthetic MI. This involves recalling muscle contraction based on a muscle sensory image and was reported to indicate the activity of brain regions similar to those involved in actual muscle contraction (Ruby and Decety, 2001). In the transfer training group, the muscle sensory image evaluation correlated to the actual task execution with the right hand. As a result, it was easy to recall the kinesthetic MI for the training task, thus affecting MI of the non-trained limbs so that MEP changes occurred in the left hand’s MI. In addition, brain excitability during MI for a specific task dynamically changes according to the skill improvement of the subject (Milton et al., 2008). From a neurophysiological perspective, it is considered that intermanual transfer contributes to MI formation of non-practicing limbs and performance stability. As there were different changes in left-hand MI after training between the two groups, training interventions on the ipsilateral and contralateral side may have had different effects on corticospinal excitability. Intermanual Transfer Effects on the Untrained Side Performance Several previous studies have used repeated training to ameliorate the performance of an untrained side of the body. Specifically, they have investigated the effect of intermanual transfer on ballistic motor performance (Carroll et al., 2008; Lee et al., 2010), sequence learning (Dickins et al., ...
Source: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research