TY  - GEN
A1  - Dordevic, Milos
A1  - Hölzer, Sonja
A1  - Russo, Augusta
A1  - García Alanis, José Carlos
A1  - Müller, Notger Germar
T1  - The Role of the Precuneus in Human Spatial Updating in a Real Environment Setting—A cTBS Study
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Gesundheitswissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - As we move through an environment, we update positions of our body relative to other objects, even when some objects temporarily or permanently leave our field of view—this ability is termed egocentric spatial updating and plays an important role in everyday life. Still, our knowledge about its representation in the brain is still scarce, with previous studies using virtual movements in virtual environments or patients with brain lesions suggesting that the precuneus might play an important role. However, whether this assumption is also true when healthy humans move in real environments where full body-based cues are available in addition to the visual cues typically used in many VR studies is unclear. Therefore, in this study we investigated the role of the precuneus in egocentric spatial updating in a real environment setting in 20 healthy young participants who underwent two conditions in a cross-over design: (a) stimulation, achieved through applying continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) to inhibit the precuneus and (b) sham condition (activated coil turned upside down). In both conditions, participants had to walk back with blindfolded eyes to objects they had previously memorized while walking with open eyes. Simplified trials (without spatial updating) were used as control condition, to make sure the participants were not affected by factors such as walking blindfolded, vestibular or working memory deficits. A significant interaction was found, with participants performing better in the sham condition compared to real stimulation, showing smaller errors both in distance and angle. The results of our study reveal evidence of an important role of the precuneus in a real-environment egocentric spatial updating; studies on larger samples are necessary to confirm and further investigate this finding.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Gesundheitswissenschaftliche Reihe - 1 
KW  - precuneus
KW  - spatial updating
KW  - TMS
KW  - cTBS
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-565542
SP  - 1
EP  - 13
PB  - Universitätsverlag Potsdam
CY  - Potsdam
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Gianelli, Claudia
A1  - Dalla Volta, Riccardo
T1  - Does listening to action-related sentences modulate the activity of the motor system?
BT  - Replication of a combined TMS and behavioral study
N2  - The neurophysiological and behavioral correlates of action-related language processing have been debated for long time. A precursor in this field was the study by Buccino et al. (2005) combining transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and behavioral measures (reaction times, RTs) to study the effect of listening to hand- and foot-related sentences. In the TMS experiment, the authors showed a decrease of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from hand muscles when processing hand-related verbs as compared to foot-related verbs. Similarly, MEPs recorded from leg muscles decreased when participants processed foot-related as compared to hand-related verbs. In the behavioral experiment, using the same stimuli and a semantic decision task the authors found slower RTs when the participants used the body effector (hand or foot) involved in the actual execution of the action expressed by the presented verb to give their motor responses. These findings were interpreted as an interference effect due to a simultaneous involvement of the motor system in both a language and a motor task. Our replication aimed to enlarge the sample size and replicate the findings with higher statistical power. The TMS experiment showed a significant modulation of hand MEPs, but in the sense of a motor facilitation when processing hand-related verbs. On the contrary, the behavioral experiment did not show significant results. The results are discussed within the general debate on the time-course of the modulation of motor cortex during implicit and explicit language processing and in relation to the studies on action observation/understanding.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 272 
KW  - action language
KW  - motor system
KW  - TMS
KW  - motor resonance
KW  - interference
KW  - replication
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-75173
ER  -