Left Dorsal Premotor Cortex and Supramarginal Gyrus Complement Each Other during Rapid Action Reprogramming

• DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1010-12.2012
• Publication Date: 2012-11-14T17:47:52Z
• Authors: Gesa Hartwigsen; Sven Bestmann; Nick S. Ward; Saskia Woerbel; Claudia Mastroeni; Oliver Granert; Hartwig R. Siebner
• Keywords: Premotor cortex; Supramarginal gyrus

The ability to discard a prepared action plan in favor of an alternative is critical when facing sudden environmental changes. We tested whether the functional contribution left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) during reprogramming depends on integrity dorsal premotor cortex (PMd). Adopting dual-site repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) strategy, we first transiently disrupted PMd with “off-line” 1 Hz rTMS and then applied focal “on-line” SMG while human subjects performed spatially precued reaction time (RT) task. Effective on-line but not sham increased errors had reprogram their response invalid precue regardless type preceding off-line rTMS. This suggests that primarily contributes updating actions by suppressing invalidly responses. On-line additionally RTs for correct responses trials, only after PMd. infer caused additional dysfunction PMd, which relevance rapid activation response, sensitized disruptive effects These results provide causal evidence jointly contribute reprogramming, also respective weight these areas can be rapidly redistributed. mechanism might constitute generic feature networks allows compensation dysfunctions.