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Extensive studies have attempted to address this question by mapping brain activation patterns with motor coordination such as simultaneous repetitive finger movement. However, different study methods and analysis strategies reveal different aspects of brain activation patterns rendering no confirmative result. The general consensus of previous studies is that complex movements produce activation of the primary motor and sensory areas, as well as the motor association areas and the cerebellum. However, most of these studies were limited to either an independent single sequencing task or merely single finger movement. There are very few studies integrating the magnitude and the pattern of cerebellar activation at differential levels of motor task complexity, that is the specific contrast between the different features of a hand movement, including the increased number of movement components such as from palm tapping (PT), pronation/supination (PS), to fist-edge-palm (FEP) or sequential length (the detailed operational definition was stated separately in the following section). Dr. Raymond Chan and his team have specifically and systematically addressed this issue by reviewing a number of imaging studies that covered the neural substrates of different finger/hand movement tasks first to conduct a quantitative meta-analysis using Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE). They found consistent activation that highlights the role of task complexity in cerebellum for finger/hand motor tasks by using both ALE meta-analysis and label-based review. In general, the anterior ipsilateral cerebellum is activated when the unimanual motor task is simply finger-tapping or finger/thumb opposition in a simple sequence. The vermis are mostly activated in the hand movement and finger key press. Different regions in cerebellum might be associated with various movement demands. These findings are very important for us to investigate neurological soft signs such as the Fist-Edge-Palm task in schizophrenia. These signs have been considered to be one of the potential endophenotypes for schizophrenia. This research is supported by the Research Fund (KSCX2-YW-R-131) from the Institute of Psychology, National Natural Science Fund China (30770723), and the National Basic Research Programme (973 Programme No. 2007CB512302) to Raymond Chan.
Chan, R. C. K*., Huang, J., & Di, X. (in press). Dexterous movement complexity and cerebellar activation: A meta-analysis. Brain Research Reviews, doi:10.1016/j.brainresrev.2008.09.003. (IF: 6.457)
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