Tactile discrimination of grating orientation: fMRI activation patterns

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Minming Zhang, Zhejiang University; Erica Mariola, Emory University; Randall Stilla, Emory University; Mark Stoesz, Emory University; Hui Mao, Emory University; Xiaoping Hu, Emory University; Krishnankutty Sathian, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2005-08-01
• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20107
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Human Brain Mapping
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 4
• Start Page: 370
• End Page: 377
• Grant/Funding Information: None declared
• Keywords: Positron-Emission Tomography; somatosensory; Functional MRI; Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging; Neurosciences; Neuroimaging; multisensory; touch; Minds eye; Blind braille readers; microspatial; finger; Frontal cortex; macrospatial; Frontoparietal; Spatial resolution; Neurosciences & Neurology; Implies equivalencies; Perception; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Science & Technology; Premotor cortex
• Research Categories: Engineering, Biomedical; Biology, Neuroscience; Health Sciences, Radiology

Abstract

Grating orientation discrimination is employed widely to test tactile spatial acuity. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural circuitry underlying performance of this task. Two studies were carried out. In the first study, an extensive set of parietal and frontal cortical areas was activated during covert task performance, relative to a rest baseline. The active regions included the postcentral sulcus bilaterally and foci in the left parietal operculum, left anterior intraparietal sulcus, and bilateral premotor and prefrontal cortex. The second study examined selective recruitment of cortical areas during discrimination of grating orientation (a task with a macrospatial component) compared to discrimination of grating spacing (a purely microspatial task). The foci activated on this contrast were in the left anterior intraparietal sulcus, right postcentral sulcus and gyrus, left parieto-occipital cortex, bilateral frontal eye fields, and bilateral ventral premotor cortex. These findings not only confirm and extend previous studies of the neural processing underlying grating orientation discrimination, but also demonstrate that a distributed network of putatively rnultisensory areas is involved.