The overall goal of the research proposed in this application is to determine the brain activation patterns in the human frontal and parietal lobes during performance of specific spatial cognitive tasks, as revealed by high field strength (4 Tesla) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Healthy women and men will be studied. The tasks are designed to test hypotheses of how some higher order spatial cognitive processes are represented in the frontoparietal cortex. The research proposed is centered on route-tracing. This function crucially depends on the integrity of this cortex, as evidenced by its disturbance following cortical damage, e.g. after stroke. The processes involved in route-tracing comprise tracing of route segments as well as turning from one segment to the next. We will test five hypotheses concerning the neural representation of these processes and their specific aspects for which parietal cortex might be instrumental. The first hypothesis is that the direction of tracing of a straight route segment is represented in an orderly fashion, such that there is an orderly map of the direction of tracing. The second hypothesis is that tracing of a complex route (i.e. a route composed of multiple segments) is a spatially distributed process that sequentially engages distinct parts of the frontoparietal cortex, as the process unfolds in time. The third hypothesis is that turning from one segment to the next involves a process of mental rotation between these two segments, such that the intensity of activation will depend on the angle of rotation. The fourth hypothesis is that this dependence of the activation on the angle of directional change will be qualitatively and quantitatively similar to the dependence observed in a stand-alone mental rotation paradigm. Finally, the fifth hypothesis concerns differences between women and men with respect to the brain activation patterns associated with tracing complex sequences and the dependence of activation on the turning angle and mental rotation. The potential achievement of these objectives is within reach, due to the adequate resolution afforded by the fMRI at high magnetic field, even for individual subjects. The data acquired will be analyzed using both traditional as well as specialized spatial statistical techniques. The results to be obtained are expected to provide novel insights into how the brain deals with dynamic, cognitive, visuomotor processes that are commonly disturbed in patients suffering from cortical damage, e.g. after stroke. In addition, they will provide an insight into possible hemispheric asymmetries and differences between women and men, especially with respect to the performance of sequential movement and mental rotation tasks ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01NS032919-12
Application #
7196422
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-IFCN-J (01))
Program Officer
Babcock, Debra J
Project Start
1994-07-15
Project End
2008-02-29
Budget Start
2007-03-01
Budget End
2008-02-29
Support Year
12
Fiscal Year
2007
Total Cost
$247,186
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Department
Neurosciences
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
555917996
City
Minneapolis
State
MN
Country
United States
Zip Code
55455
Lewis, Scott M; Christova, Peka; Jerde, Trenton A et al. (2012) A compact and realistic cerebral cortical layout derived from prewhitened resting-state fMRI time series: Cherniak's adjacency rule, size law, and metamodule grouping upheld. Front Neuroanat 6:36
Christova, P; Lewis, S M; Jerde, T A et al. (2011) True associations between resting fMRI time series based on innovations. J Neural Eng 8:046025
Tzagarakis, Charidimos; Jerde, Trenton A; Lewis, Scott M et al. (2009) Cerebral cortical mechanisms of copying geometrical shapes: a multidimensional scaling analysis of fMRI patterns of activation. Exp Brain Res 194:369-80
Christova, Peka S; Lewis, Scott M; Tagaris, Georgios A et al. (2008) A voxel-by-voxel parametric fMRI study of motor mental rotation: hemispheric specialization and gender differences in neural processing efficiency. Exp Brain Res 189:79-90
Georgopoulos, Apostolos P; Karageorgiou, Elissaios (2008) Neurostatistics: applications, challenges and expectations. Stat Med 27:407-17
Lewis, Scott M; Jerde, Trenton A; Tzagarakis, Charidimos et al. (2005) Logarithmic transformation for high-field BOLD fMRI data. Exp Brain Res 165:447-53
Gourtzelidis, Pavlos; Tzagarakis, Charidimos; Lewis, Scott M et al. (2005) Mental maze solving: directional fMRI tuning and population coding in the superior parietal lobule. Exp Brain Res 165:273-82
Lewis, Scott M; Jerde, Trenton A; Tzagarakis, Charidimos et al. (2003) Cerebellar activation during copying geometrical shapes. J Neurophysiol 90:3874-87
Georgopoulos, Apostolos P (2002) Cognitive motor control: spatial and temporal aspects. Curr Opin Neurobiol 12:678-83
Georgopoulos, A P; Whang, K; Georgopoulos, M A et al. (2001) Functional magnetic resonance imaging of visual object construction and shape discrimination : relations among task, hemispheric lateralization, and gender. J Cogn Neurosci 13:72-89

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