The effect of cooling of the supplementary motor cortex and adjacent cortical areas.

The medial surface of the rostral part of frontal agranular cortex, largely corresponding to the supplementary motor area, was rapidly and reversibly cooled while a monkey was performing a trained motor task requiring a premovement selection process of determining sensory signals as movement triggering or non-triggering. During cooling, the motor task was poorly performed with grossly altered reaction times and variable amount of force, along with erroneous responses. Neuronal activity in the precentral motor cortex in response to sensory signals was also found to be altered.