TY - JOUR

T1 - Impairment of auditory-motor timing and compensatory reorganization after ventral premotor cortex stimulation

AU - Kornysheva, Katja

AU - Schubotz, Ricarda I

PY - 2011/6/29

Y1 - 2011/6/29

N2 - Integrating auditory and motor information often requires precise timing as in speech and music. In humans, the position of the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) in the dorsal auditory stream renders this area a node for auditory-motor integration. Yet, it remains unknown whether the PMv is critical for auditory-motor timing and which activity increases help to preserve task performance following its disruption. 16 healthy volunteers participated in two sessions with fMRI measured at baseline and following rTMS (rTMS) of either the left PMv or a control region. Subjects synchronized left or right finger tapping to sub-second beat rates of auditory rhythms in the experimental task, and produced self-paced tapping during spectrally matched auditory stimuli in the control task. Left PMv rTMS impaired auditory-motor synchronization accuracy in the first sub-block following stimulation (p<0.01, Bonferroni corrected), but spared motor timing and attention to task. Task-related activity increased in the homologue right PMv, but did not predict the behavioral effect of rTMS. In contrast, anterior midline cerebellum revealed most pronounced activity increase in less impaired subjects. The present findings suggest a critical role of the left PMv in feed-forward computations enabling accurate auditory-motor timing, which can be compensated by activity modulations in the cerebellum, but not in the homologue region contralateral to stimulation.

AB - Integrating auditory and motor information often requires precise timing as in speech and music. In humans, the position of the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) in the dorsal auditory stream renders this area a node for auditory-motor integration. Yet, it remains unknown whether the PMv is critical for auditory-motor timing and which activity increases help to preserve task performance following its disruption. 16 healthy volunteers participated in two sessions with fMRI measured at baseline and following rTMS (rTMS) of either the left PMv or a control region. Subjects synchronized left or right finger tapping to sub-second beat rates of auditory rhythms in the experimental task, and produced self-paced tapping during spectrally matched auditory stimuli in the control task. Left PMv rTMS impaired auditory-motor synchronization accuracy in the first sub-block following stimulation (p<0.01, Bonferroni corrected), but spared motor timing and attention to task. Task-related activity increased in the homologue right PMv, but did not predict the behavioral effect of rTMS. In contrast, anterior midline cerebellum revealed most pronounced activity increase in less impaired subjects. The present findings suggest a critical role of the left PMv in feed-forward computations enabling accurate auditory-motor timing, which can be compensated by activity modulations in the cerebellum, but not in the homologue region contralateral to stimulation.

KW - Acoustic Stimulation

KW - Adult

KW - Evoked Potentials, Motor

KW - Female

KW - Humans

KW - Magnetic Resonance Imaging

KW - Male

KW - Motor Cortex

KW - Perception

KW - Young Adult

KW - Journal Article

KW - Randomized Controlled Trial

KW - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0021421

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0021421

M3 - Article

C2 - 21738657

VL - 6

SP - e21421

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 6

ER -