Ryan J. Cassidy1, Shaun Boe2,3,
William McIlroy4,5, Simon J. Graham6,7
1Institute of Biomaterials
& Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2School
of Physiotherapy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada; 3Department
of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada; 4Toronto
Rehabilitation Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 5Department
of Kinesiology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada; 6Department
of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 7Sunnybrook
Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Functional MRI analyses of motor skill acquisition have the potential to inform rehabilitative treatments of neurologic conditions, but experimental tasks used therein often face challenges including being mastered quickly and difficult to generalize. To address this, we have devised a novel short-term visuomotor learning task involving asymmetric bilateral gripping. Group analysis of fMRI data collected pre- and post-training confirms a gradual learning process involving cerebellar, thalamic, supplementary/primary motor regions, along with ventrolateral prefrontal cortical involvement illustrating a learning effect. Analysis with a varied task post-training confirms generalizability in the same regions, which is consistent with pilot behavioral results.
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