Neural Basis of Sensory Learning: Brain Regions
Indiana University
Summary
The purpose of this study is to understand how the sensory and motor areas of the brain work together to keep a person's hand movements accurate (sensorimotor learning). The investigators hope this information may be useful one day to improve rehabilitation techniques in patients with brain lesions.
Description
To make accurate movements, the brain needs to compensate for the frequent changes in the environment one experiences (lighting conditions, slippery floors, etc). For example, when one reaches to grab an object underwater, there are significant challenges the brain must overcome. Water is more viscous than air, so motor planning must take the increased resistance into account. In addition, light is bent by water, so one sees the underwater hand in a different location from where one feels it with body position sense (proprioception, from sensors in the joints and muscles). While initially move…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18–45 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria: * Potential subjects must be between the ages of 18-45 years old and right-handed. Aging has been shown to affect the morphology of sensory and motor nerves, conduction velocities of nerves, and number of motor neurons in the spinal cord; to avoid these confounding factors we will only examine younger-to middle-aged adults. * There are differences in cortical function and corticospinal projections such that testing the right arm of a right-handed individual is not necessarily equivalent to testing the left arm of a left-handed individual. To eliminate this confound, we wil…
Interventions
- OtherTheta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation
Real or sham continuous theta burst TMS (cTBS) will be delivered to a location on the head, determined by randomized group assignment. cTBS consists of 600 low-intensity TMS pulses delivered over 40 seconds in a pattern of 50 Hz triplets delivered at 5 Hz.
Location
- Indiana University BloomingtonBloomington, Indiana