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Structure of the motor descending pathways correlates with the temporal kinematics of hand movements

Begliomini, Chiara, Ceccarini, Francesco, Dell’Acqua, Veronica Pinuccia, Budisavljevic, Sanja and Castiello, Umberto 2022. Structure of the motor descending pathways correlates with the temporal kinematics of hand movements. Biology 11 (10) , 1482. 10.3390/biology11101482

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Abstract

Simple Summary: How hand motor behavior relates to the microstructure of the underlying subcortical white matter pathways is yet to be fully understood. Here we consider two well-known examples of our everyday motor repertoire, reaching and reach-to-grasp, by looking at their temporal unfolding and at the microstructure of descending projection pathways, conveying motor information from the motor cortices towards the more ventral regions of the nervous system. We combine three-dimensional kinematics, describing the temporal profile of hand movements, with diffusion imaging tractography, exploring the microstructure of specific segments of the projection pathways (internal capsule, corticospinal and hand motor tracts). The results indicate that the level of anisotropy characterizing these white matter tracts can influence the temporal unfolding of reaching and reach-to-grasp movements. Abstract: The projection system, a complex organization of ascending and descending white matter pathways, is the principal system for conveying sensory and motor information, connecting frontal and sensorimotor regions with ventral regions of the central nervous system. The corticospinal tract (CST), one of the principal projection pathways, carries distal movement-related information from the cortex to the spinal cord, and whether its microstructure is linked to the kinematics of hand movements is still an open question. The aim of the present study was to explore how microstructure of descending branches of the projection system, namely the hand motor tract (HMT), the corticospinal tract (CST) and its sector within the internal capsule (IC), can relate to the temporal profile of reaching and reach-to-grasp movements. Projection pathways of 31 healthy subjects were virtually dissected by means of diffusion tractography and the kinematics of reaching and reach-to-grasp movements were also analyzed. A positive association between Hindrance Modulated Orientation Anisotropy (HMOA) and kinematics was observed, suggesting that anisotropy of the considered tract can influence the temporal unfolding of motor performance. We highlight, for the first time, that hand kinematics and the visuomotor transformation processes underlying reaching and reach-to-grasp movements relate to the microstructure of specific projection fibers subserving these movements.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Psychology
Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC)
Additional Information: License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Type: open-access
Publisher: MDPI
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 7 November 2022
Date of Acceptance: 30 September 2022
Last Modified: 03 May 2023 23:00
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/154031

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