MONITORING OF TASK-PERFORMANCE DURING FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC-RESONANCE-IMAGING OF SENSORIMOTOR CORTEX AT 1.5 T

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has found widespread clin ical interest, Difficulties in clinical use of the fMRI technique aris e, considering the lack of knowledge about activation task performance , This accounts especially for sensorimotor activation studies, in whi ch performance of the sensorimotor activation task is - if at all - us ually rated visually by subjective or semiquantitative methods (i.e., defining categories of performance such as neurological soft signs sca les), Recently, instrumental methods for the measurement and analysis of motor performance have been developed. Pronation/supination (hand r otation) movement was shown to be an easily measurable and promising m otor task, We have adapted a mechanic device (pronation/supination dev ice, PSD) to monitor motor performance during the fMRI experiment, In a feasibility study, an investigation of fMRI activation strength depe ndence of sensorimotor cortices and supplementary motor area upon task frequency (25, 50, and 75 cycles/min) was carried out on 10 right-han ded healthy volunteers, Furthermore, the authors report the observatio n of stimulus-induced activation changes in the cerebellum during pron ation/supination movement.