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J Neurophysiol (October 22, 2003). doi:10.1152/jn.00651.2003
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Submitted on July 8, 2003
Accepted on October 20, 2003

The organization of action sequences and the role of the pre-SMA

Steve W Kennerley1*, Katsuyuki Sakai2, and Matthew F Rushworth1

1 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; FMRIB, Department of Neurology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
2 Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: steve.kennerley{at}psy.ox.ac.uk.

To understand the contribution of the human pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) in sequential motor behavior, we performed a series of finger key-press experiments. Experiment 1 revealed that each subject had a spontaneous tendency to organize or "chunk" a long sequence into shorter components. We hypothesized that the pre-SMA might have a special role in initiating each chunk but not at other points during the sequence. Experiment 2 therefore, examined the effect of 0.5s, 10Hz rTMS directed over the pre-SMA. As hypothesized, performance was disrupted when rTMS was delivered over the pre-SMA at the beginning of the second chunk but not when it was delivered in the middle of a chunk. Contrary to the hypothesis, TMS did not disrupt sequence initiation. Experiments 3 and 4 examined whether the very first movement of a sequence could be disrupted under any circumstances. Pre-SMA TMS did disrupt the initiation of sequences but only when subjects had to switch between sequences and when the first movement of each sequence was not covertly instructed by a learned visuomotor association. In conjunction the results suggest that for overlearned sequences i) the pre-SMA is primarily concerned with the initiation of a sequence or sequence chunk, ii) the role of the pre-SMA in sequence initiation is only discerned when subjects must retrieve the sequence from memory as a superordinate set of movements without the aid of a visuomotor association. Control experiments revealed such effects were not present when rTMS was applied over the left dorsal premotor cortex (PMd).




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