Baltic Center for Neurotechnology and Artificial Intelligence, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, 236016 Kaliningrad, Russia.
Neurodynamics and Cognitive Technology Laboratory, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, 603105 Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 May 11;23(10):4661. doi: 10.3390/s23104661.
Experiments show activation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in motor imagery (MI) tasks, but its functional role requires further investigation. Here, we address this issue by applying repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the left DLPFC and evaluating its effect on brain activity and the latency of MI response. This is a randomized, sham-controlled EEG study. Participants were randomly assigned to receive sham (15 subjects) or real high-frequency rTMS (15 subjects). We performed EEG sensor-level, source-level, and connectivity analyses to evaluate the rTMS effects. We revealed that excitatory stimulation of the left DLPFC increases theta-band power in the right precuneus (PrecuneusR) via the functional connectivity between them. The precuneus theta-band power negatively correlates with the latency of the MI response, so the rTMS speeds up the responses in 50% of participants. We suppose that posterior theta-band power reflects attention modulation of sensory processing; therefore, high power may indicate attentive processing and cause faster responses.
实验表明，在运动想象（MI）任务中，左背外侧前额叶皮层（DLPFC）被激活，但它的功能作用需要进一步研究。在这里，我们通过应用重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）到左 DLPFC 并评估其对大脑活动和 MI 反应潜伏期的影响来解决这个问题。这是一项随机、假刺激对照的 EEG 研究。参与者被随机分配接受假刺激（15 名受试者）或真正的高频 rTMS（15 名受试者）。我们进行了 EEG 传感器水平、源水平和连通性分析来评估 rTMS 的效果。我们发现，通过它们之间的功能连接，左 DLPFC 的兴奋性刺激增加了右楔前叶（PrecuneusR）的θ波段功率。楔前叶θ波段功率与 MI 反应的潜伏期呈负相关，因此 rTMS 使 50%的参与者的反应加快。我们假设后θ波段功率反映了对感觉处理的注意力调节；因此，高功率可能表明注意力处理并导致更快的反应。
