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R Hari

Publications and source records attributed to R Hari.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1999

Task-dependent modulation of 15-30 Hz coherence between rectified EMGs from human hand and forearm muscles.

1. Recent reports have shown task-related changes in oscillatory activity in the 15-30 Hz range in the sensorimotor cortex of human subjects and monkeys during skilled hand movements. In the monkey these oscillations have been shown to be coherent with oscillatory activity in the electromyographic activity of hand and forearm muscles. 2. In this study we investigated the modulation of oscillations in the electromyogram (EMG) of human volunteers during tasks requiring precision grip of two spring-loaded levers. 3. Two tasks were investigated: in the 'hold' task, subjects were required to maintain a steady grip force (ca 2.1 N or 2.6 N) for 8 s. In the 'ramp' task, there was an initial hold period for 3 s (force ca 2.1 N) followed by a linear increase in grip force over a 2 s period. The task ended with a further steady hold for 3 s at the higher force level (ca 2.6 N). 4. Surface EMGs were recorded from five hand and forearm muscles in 12 subjects. The coherence of oscillatory activity was calculated between each muscle pair. Frequencies between 1 and 100 Hz were analysed. 5. Each subject showed a peak in the coherence spectra in the 15-30 Hz bandwidth during the hold task. This coherence was absent during the initial movement of the levers. During the ramp task the coherence in the 15-30 Hz range was also significantly reduced during the movement phase, and significantly increased during the second hold period, relative to the initial hold. 6. There was coherence between the simultaneously recorded magnetoencephalogram (MEG) and EMG during steady grip in the hold task; this coherence disappeared during the initial lever movement. Using a single equivalent current dipole source model, the coherent cortical activity was localized to the hand region of the contralateral motor cortex. This suggests that the EMG-EMG coherence was, therefore, at least in part, of cortical origin. 7. The results are discussed in terms of a possible role for synchrony in the efficient recruitment of motor units during maintained grip.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Cortical visuomotor integration during eye pursuit and eye-finger pursuit.

To elucidate cortical mechanisms of visuomotor integration, we recorded whole-scalp neuromagnetic signals from six normal volunteers while they were viewing a black dot moving linearly at the speed of 4 degrees /sec within a virtual rectangle. The dot changed its direction randomly once every 0.3-2 sec. The subject either (1) fixated a cross in the center of the screen (eye fixation task), (2) followed the moving dot with the eyes (eye pursuit task), or (3) followed the dot with both the eyes and the right index finger (eye-finger pursuit task). Prominent magnetic signals, triggered by the changes of the direction of the dot, were seen in all conditions, but they were clearly enhanced by the tasks and were strongest during the eye-finger pursuit task and over the anterior inferior parietal lobule (aIPL). Source modeling indicated activation of aIPL [Brodmann's area (BA) 40], the posterosuperior parietal lobule (SPL; BA 7), the dorsolateral frontal cortex (DLF; BA 6), and the occipital cortex (BA 18/19). The activation first peaked in the occipital areas, then in the aIPL and DLF, and some 50 msec later in the SPL. Our results suggest that all these areas are involved in visuomotor transformation, with aIPL playing a crucial role in this process.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Rhythmical corticomotor communication.

Recent non-invasive human studies show that rhythmic oscillatory activity of the motor cortex and the firing of motor units of the muscle are coherent during isometric contraction, with peak frequencies around 20 Hz or 40 Hz, depending on the contraction strength. The cortical signals precede the motor unit firing and appear to reflect modulation of the common central drive to the spinal motoneuron pool. The rhythmic modulation may form a tool for efficient driving of motor units but we express some reservations about the assumed binding and attention-related roles of the rolandic brain rhythms. The cortex-muscle coherence is of interest for understanding of cortical control of voluntary movements and the pathophysiology of various motor disorders, as well as for unravelling the functional significance of cortical rhythms.

Animals↗
PubMed1999

Stronger occipital cortical activation to lower than upper visual field stimuli. Neuromagnetic recordings.

We recorded whole-scalp magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to black-and-white checkerboards to study whether the human cortical responses are quantitatively similar to stimulation of the lower and upper visual field at small, 0-6 degrees, eccentricities. All stimuli evoked strong occipital responses peaking at 50-100 ms (mean 75 ms). The activation was modeled with a single equivalent current dipole in the contralateral occipital cortex, close to the calcarine fissure, agreeing with an activation of the V1/V2 cortex. The dipole was, on average, twice as strong to lower than to upper field stimuli. Responses to hemifield stimuli that extended to both lower and upper fields resembled the responses to lower field stimuli in source current direction and strength. These results agree with psychophysical data, which indicate lower visual field advantage in complex visual processing. Parieto-occipital responses in the putative V6 complex were similar to lower and upper field stimuli.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Effects of voluntary hyperventilation on cortical sensory responses. Electroencephalographic and magnetoencephalographic studies.

It is well established that voluntary hyperventilation (HV) slows down electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythms. Little information is available, however, on the effects of HV on cortical responses elicited by sensory stimulation. In the present study, we recorded auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) and magnetic fields (AEFs), and somatosensory evoked magnetic fields (SEFs) from healthy subjects before, during, and after a 3- to 5-min period of voluntary HV. The effectiveness of HV was verified by measuring the end-tidal CO2 levels. Long-latency (100-200 ms) AEPs and long-latency AEFs originating at the supratemporal auditory cortex, as well as long-latency SEFs from the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) and from the opercular somatosensory cortex (OC), were all reduced during HV. The short-latency SEFs from SI were clearly less modified, there being, however, a slight reduction of the earliest cortical excitatory response, the N20m deflection. A middle-latency SEF deflection from SI at about 60 ms (P60 m) was slightly increased. For AEFs and SEFs, the center-of-gravity locations of the activated neuronal populations were not changed during HV. All amplitude changes returned to baseline levels within 10 min after the end of HV. The AEPs were not altered when the subjects breathed 5% CO2 in air in a hyperventilation-like manner, which prevented the development of hypocapnia. We conclude that moderate HV suppresses long-latency evoked responses from the primary projection cortices, while the early responses are less reduced. The reduction of long-latency responses is probably mediated by hypocapnia rather than by other nonspecific effects of HV. It is suggested that increased neuronal excitability caused by HV-induced hypocapnia leads to spontaneous and/or asynchronous firing of cortical neurones, which in turn reduces stimulus-locked synaptic events.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Where the abstract feature maps of the brain might come from.

Three types of neuronal organization can be called 'brain maps': sets of feature-sensitive cells, ordered projections between neuronal layers and ordered maps of abstract features. The latter are most intriguing as they reflect the central properties of an organism's experiences and environment. It is proposed that such feature maps are learned in a process that involves parallel input to neurons in a brain area and adaptation of neurons in the neighborhood of the cells that respond most strongly to this input. This article presents a new mathematical formulation for such adaptation and relates it to physiological functions.

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PubMed1998

Activation of human primary motor cortex during action observation: a neuromagnetic study.

The monkey premotor cortex contains neurons that discharge during action execution and during observation of actions made by others. Transcranial magnetic stimulation experiments suggest that a similar observation/execution matching system also is present in humans. We recorded neuromagnetic oscillatory activity of the human precentral cortex from 10 healthy volunteers while (i) they had no task to perform, (ii) they were manipulating a small object, and (iii) they were observing another individual performing the same task. The left and right median nerves were stimulated alternately (interstimulus interval, 1.5 s) at intensities exceeding motor threshold, and the poststimulus rebound of the rolandic 15- to 25-Hz activity was quantified. In agreement with previous studies, the rebound was strongly suppressed bilaterally during object manipulation. Most interestingly, the rebound also was significantly diminished during action observation (31-46% of the suppression during object manipulation). Control experiments, in which subjects were instructed to observe stationary or moving stimuli, confirmed the specificity of the suppression effect. Because the recorded 15- to 25-Hz activity is known to originate mainly in the precentral motor cortex, we concluded that the human primary motor cortex is activated during observation as well as execution of motor tasks. These findings have implications for a better understanding of the machinery underlying action recognition in humans.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

Vibration-induced auditory-cortex activation in a congenitally deaf adult.

Considerable changes take place in the number of cerebral neurons, synapses and axons during development, mainly as a result of competition between different neural activities [1-4]. Studies using animals suggest that when input from one sensory modality is deprived early in development, the affected neural structures have the potential to mediate functions for the remaining modalities [5-8]. We now show that similar potential exists in the human auditory system: vibrotactile stimuli, applied on the palm and fingers of a congenitally deaf adult, activated his auditory cortices. The recorded magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals also indicated that the auditory cortices were able to discriminate between the applied 180 Hz and 250 Hz vibration frequencies. Our findings suggest that human cortical areas, normally subserving hearing, may process vibrotactile information in the congenitally deaf.

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PubMed1998

Three hands: fragmentation of human bodily awareness.

We describe patient E.P. who occasionally perceives a 'ghost' hand which copies the previous positions of the left hand with a 0.5-1 min time lag, but follows the movement patterns of the right hand. The symptoms started after an operation of a ruptured aneurysm, followed by an infarction of the right frontal lobe; E.P. also has a previously lesioned corpus callosum. Neuromagnetic recordings revealed that activity of the left secondary somatosensory cortex was strongly suppressed during the ghost arm percept, thereby providing an objective correlate for E.P.'s sensations. We conclude that simultaneous mental contents about body scheme may be based on neural information extracted at considerably different times, resulting in fragmentation of bodily awareness.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Responsiveness of human cortical activity to rhythmical stimulation: a three-modality, whole-cortex neuromagnetic investigation.

We developed numerical indicators to quantify stimulus-related changes in cortical magnetic signals recorded from nine healthy subjects while they received 1- to 2.5-s trains of 15 stimuli (somatosensory, visual, or auditory in separate runs) at rates from 6 to 14 Hz, intermingled with 1.6-s pauses. A locking index (L) was introduced to quantify how well the responses are time locked to the stimuli and a global change factor (GC) to indicate changes in the whole-cortex oscillatory activity in the 5- to 25-Hz frequency range. The responses were visualized with color-coded images illustrating cortical reactivity for all stimulus rates simultaneously. These color maps clearly showed that the modality-specific cortical signals were enhanced at frequencies corresponding to the stimulus rate during the trains. For somatosensory stimulation the activity in the vicinity of the somatosensory hand area was enhanced at most stimulus rates, suggesting mainly superposition of evoked responses. In individuals with strong posterior resting rhythm, visual stimuli typically entrained activity in the parietooccipital sulcus at stimulus rates close to the main frequency of the spontaneous activity, probably reflecting driving of the intrinsic cortical rhythm, whereas in subjects with little spontaneous parietooccipital rhythm the cortical signal appeared to be composed mainly of visual evoked responses. No modality-specific enhancement was observed during auditory stimulation. During the pauses between the trains, the cortical signals were significantly suppressed compared with the resting condition: The peak activity (7-13 Hz) was modulated within, but also outside, the modality-specific areas, and the signals outside the frequency peaks of maximum power were consistently and reproducibly suppressed over the whole cortex by all stimuli.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Neuromagnetic sequelae of herpes simplex encephalitis.

Spontaneous cortical activity and auditory evoked responses were recorded with a whole-scalp 122-channel neuromagnetometer from 4 patients after left-hemisphere dominant herpes simplex encephalitis and associated memory disorders. Spontaneous activity of one patient contained periodic sharp waves over the left hemisphere; the background activity was attenuated. The sources of periodic sharp waves clustered close to the sources of auditory evoked fields in the temporal lobe. In controls, dominant rhythmic activity over the parieto-occipital region had spectral maximum at 10.6 +/- 0.6 Hz; in patients the dominant rhythmic activity peaked at 8.6 +/- 1.8 Hz. The suppression of the parieto-occipital activity in eyes-open versus eyes-closed condition was smaller in patients than in controls. The patients' peak spectral frequency was correlated with neuropsychological tests reflecting deficient attentional capacity. The observed changes probably reflect decreased subcortical control of the cortical electric activity.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Modification of neuromagnetic cortical signals by thalamic infarctions.

Auditory evoked responses and spontaneous cortical activity were recorded with a whole-scalp 122-channel neuromagnetometer from 7 patients, who had small thalamic infarctions in the region of the left anterior tuberothalamic artery and associated memory defects. In contrast to healthy control subjects, with dominant rhythmic activity at 10.6 +/- 0.6 Hz in the parieto-occipital region, the spectral maximum in the patients was at 8.9 +/- 0.4 Hz. Abnormal acceleration of rhythmic activity was also observed bilaterally in rolandic areas. Our findings imply that lesions of non-specific thalamic nuclei may disturb human brain rhythms in widespread cortical areas. 'Mismatch responses' to deviant tones (1.1 kHz) among standards (1.0 kHz), suggested to reflect sensory auditory memory in healthy subjects, were absent in 2 patients, markedly decreased in 3, and normal in 2, implying that pathways passing through the anteromedial thalamus contribute to modulation of these responses. We conclude that local unilateral lesions in the anteromedial thalamus may cause extensive, bilateral alterations in the brain's electric activity.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Immunological confirmation of elevated levels of CuZn superoxide dismutase protein in an artificially selected long-lived strain of Drosophila melanogaster.

Oxidative stress-induced damage is a major causal factor leading to the loss of function characteristic of the aging process. Various antioxidant defenses are marshalled by the organism so as to combat this oxidative damage and delay the onset of senscence. CuZnSOD is one of the major antioxidant enzymes and has been shown to play an important role in the extended longevity of Drosophila melanogaster. Although assays exist with which to measure the CuZnSOD RNA prevalence and enzyme activity, there existed no antibodies that permitted the measurement of the actual amount of Drosophila enzyme protein present. Development of such a tool would enhance our ability to understand mechanisms of antioxidant gene expression in this organism. We have developed a polyclonal antibody against synthetic SOD peptides that is specific for Drosophila CuZnSOD as shown by Western blots. It is very sensitive when tested against native Drosophila CuZnSOD protein. Its use in our experimental system confirms the prior RNA and enzyme activity measurements that indicate that our genetically selected long-lived strain has significantly higher levels of CuZnSOD protein than does the appropriate control strain.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

Human cortical-evoked fields during detection, localisation, and identification of 'pop-out' targets.

We investigated human cortical activity during four 'effortless-pop-out' visual search tasks with the use of magnetoencephalography. The search display, which was identical across all the tasks, consisted of vertical line segments, one of which was rotated abruptly 45 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise. In the passive-viewing task the observers gave no response to the search display. In the target-detection task they responded to the onset of the target motion irrespective of its location and direction. In the target-localisation task the observers reported whether the line rotation appeared above or below the fixation point while ignoring the direction of the rotation. In contrast, in the target-identification task they indicated the direction of the line rotation, and the location of the rotation in the array was irrelevant. Cortical activity was recorded with a whole-scalp magnetometer while the observers were performing each task. In addition to the expected activation of the occipital and somatomotor cortical regions, two other active cortical areas were consistently identified in both hemispheres: one in the occipito-temporal area, probably corresponding to the motion-specific V5 complex, and another in the parieto-temporal region. The activation of the right occipito-temporal source depended on the task. The maximum amplitude was smallest for the passive viewing, increased for the detection task, and was largest for the localisation and identification.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Cortical correlate of the Piper rhythm in humans.

Cortical correlate of the Piper rhythm in humans. J. Neurophysiol. 80: 2911-2917, 1998. The electromyogram (EMG) of healthy humans demonstrates a tendency to rhythmic oscillations at around 40 Hz (the Piper rhythm) during strong voluntary contraction. Why motor units should discharge synchronously locked to such a high-frequency is unclear. We recorded whole scalp magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals simultaneously with surface EMG from 10 healthy subjects. In eight subjects, coherence and time domain analyses demonstrated correspondence between the MEG signal, originating near or in the hand region of the motor cortex, and the 35- to 60-Hz EMG recorded during repeated maximal isometric contractions of the contralateral forearm extensor muscles. Three of these subjects also showed similar coherence during isometric contractions of moderate strength and slow extension movements of the wrist. In addition, coherence and time domain analyses demonstrated correspondence between the MEG signals originating near or in the foot area of the motor cortex and EMG recorded during repeated maximal isometric contractions of the contralateral tibialis anterior muscle in the 30- to 60-Hz range. Most important, the frequency at the peak of the coherence spectrum differed between forearm and leg by as much as 10 Hz in the same subject. In contrast, the peak of the coherence spectrum occurred during sustained weak contraction in the 20- to 30-Hz range similarly for both forearm and foot. The lag between EMG and MEG activity in the leg was approximately 15 ms greater than that seen in the forearm, an interval appropriate for conduction in fast pyramidal pathways. It is concluded that the Piper rhythm in muscle may be driven by a comparable oscillatory activity in the contralateral motor cortex. This cortical rhythmicity can be picked up in several types of movement and seems distinct from the 20- to 30-Hz rhythmicity recorded during weak sustained contractions.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Modulation of the parieto-occipital alpha rhythm during object detection.

Changes in the human neuromagnetic alpha rhythm were monitored during an object detection task to study the effects of visual shape processing on the parieto-occipital activity. Pictures of coherent meaningful objects, which the observers had to detect, and of disorganized meaningless non-objects were presented briefly between masks. The non-objects were systematically followed by a higher level of alpha than the objects, the difference emerging on average 400 msec after the stimulus, with a median delay of 130 msec after evoked response onsets in the occipital, temporal, and parietal cortices. Without attention to visual shape, the alpha levels did not differ between objects and non-objects. The alpha level was higher after non-objects than missed objects, and higher after missed than correctly detected objects, suggesting that the alpha level is inversely related to saliency or familiarity of the object and does not directly reflect visual awareness. The reactive alpha rhythm was generated in the parieto-occipital sulcus, which in several primate species includes areas belonging to the dorsal visual pathway. According to current views, the parietal cortex produces attentional signals that filter out irrelevant information in the ventral visual stream. Our results reinforce the idea of bidirectional interaction: information derived from visual shape can rapidly modify activity in the parieto-occipital region. The synchronized alpha oscillations may reflect attenuation of occipito-parietal information transfer and disengagement of parietal cortex from object selection.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Visual motion activates V5 in dyslexics.

A recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study concluded that the motion-specific visual area V5 is not activated in dyslexic subjects. We report here opposing evidence based on whole-scalp neuromagnetic recordings. Apparent-motion stimuli elicited similar activation of V5 in both dyslexic and control subjects, with a trend for longer latencies in dyslexics. Both high- and low-contrast stimuli activated the V5 region in dyslexics. The lack of significant blood flow changes despite modified neuronal synchrony would explain the absence of fMRI signals and the presence of neuromagnetic signals in dyslexic subjects.

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