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Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was applied to identify cortical areas involved in maintaining target information in working memory used for an upcoming grasping action. Participants had to grasp with their thumb and index finger of the dominant right hand three-dimensional objects of different size and orientation. Reaching-to-grasp movements were performed without visual feedback either immediately after object presentation or after a variable delay of 2-12 s. The right inferior parietal cortex demonstrated sustained neural activity throughout the delay, which overlapped with activity observed during encoding of the grasp target. Immediate and delayed grasping activated similar motor-related brain areas and showed no differential activity. The results suggest that the right inferior parietal cortex plays an important functional role in working memory maintenance of grasp-related information. Moreover, our findings confirm the assumption that brain areas engaged in maintaining information are also involved in encoding the same information, and thus extend previous findings on working memory function of the posterior parietal cortex in saccadic behavior to reach-to-grasp movements.
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The observation of an ambiguous figure leads to spontaneous perceptual reversals while the observed picture stays unchanged. Some ERP studies on ambiguous figures report a P300-like component correlated with perceptual reversals supporting a top-down explanation, while other studies found early visual ERP components supporting a bottom-up explanation. Based on an experimental paradigm that permits a high temporal resolution of the endogenous reversal event, we compared endogenous Necker-cube reversals with exogenously-induced reversals of unambiguous cube variants. For both reversal types, we found a chain of ERP components with the following characteristics: (1) An early occipital ERP component (130 ms) is restricted to endogenous reversals. (2) All subsequent components also appear with exogenously-induced reversals, however 40-90 ms earlier than their endogenous counterparts. (3) The latency difference between reversal types is also reflected in the timing of manual reactions, which occur 100-130 ms after P300-like components. The results suggest that the P300-like component is the same as found in other ERP studies on ambiguous figures. This component does not reflect the reversal per se, but rather its cognitive analysis, 300 ms after a change of the representation in early visual areas. The presented ERP chains integrate the different ERP results and allow to pinpoint the steps where top-down mechanisms begin to exert their influence.
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Normally we experience the visual world as stable. Ambiguous figures provide a fascinating exception: On prolonged inspection, the "Necker cube" undergoes a sudden, unavoidable reversal of its perceived front-back orientation. What happens in the brain when spontaneously switching between these equally likely interpretations? Does neural processing differ between an endogenously perceived reversal of a physically unchanged ambiguous stimulus and an exogenously caused reversal of an unambiguous stimulus? A refined EEG paradigm to measure such endogenous events uncovered an early electrophysiological correlate of this spontaneous reversal, a negativity beginning at 160 ms. Comparing across nine electrode locations suggests that this component originates in early visual areas. An EEG component of similar shape and scalp distribution, but 50 ms earlier, was evoked by an external reversal of unambiguous figures. Perceptual disambiguation seems to be accomplished by the same structures that represent objects per se, and to occur early in the visual stream. This suggests that low-level mechanisms play a crucial role in resolving perceptual ambiguity.
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- Visual Cortex/physiology
- Adult (2)
- Brain Mapping (2)
- Contingent Negative Variation/*physiology (1)
- Depth Perception/*physiology (1)
- Discrimination Learning/physiology (1)
- Electroencephalography (1)
- *Electroencephalography (1)
- Event-Related Potentials, P300/*physiology (1)
- Evoked Potentials, Visual/*physiology (1)
- Evoked Potentials, Visual/physiology (1)
- Female (2)
- Form Perception/*physiology (1)
- Hand Strength/*physiology (1)
- Humans (3)
- Image Processing, Computer-Assisted (1)
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (1)
- Male (2)
- Memory, Short-Term/*physiology (1)
- Motor Cortex/physiology (1)
- Optical Illusions/*physiology (1)
- Orientation/physiology (1)
- Orientation/*physiology (1)
- Oxygen/blood (1)
- Parietal Lobe/*physiology (1)
- Pattern Recognition, Visual/*physiology (1)
- Perceptual Closure/*physiology (1)
- Photic Stimulation (1)
- Psychomotor Performance/*physiology (1)
- Reaction Time/physiology (1)
- Reversal Learning/physiology (1)
- Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted (1)
- Somatosensory Cortex/physiology (1)
- Space Perception/*physiology (1)
- Supine Position/physiology (1)
- Visual Perception/physiology (1)
- Young Adult (1)