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Recovery of Precision Grasping after Motor Cortex Lesion does not require Forced use of the Impaired Hand in Macaca mulatta
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Recovery of Precision Grasping after Motor Cortex Lesion does not require Forced use of the Impaired Hand in Macaca mulatta

Warren G Darling, Robert J Morecraft, Diane L Rotella, Marc A Pizzimenti, Jizhi Ge, Kimberly S Stilwell-Morecraft, Hongyu Zhang, Hesham Soliman, Dave Seecharan, Ian Edwards, …
Experimental brain research, Vol.232(12), pp.3929-3938
12/2014
DOI: 10.1007/s00221-014-4068-9
PMCID: PMC4241169
PMID: 25163672

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Abstract

We investigated whether precision grasping of small objects between the index and thumb of the impaired hand recovers without forced use after surgically placed lesions to the hand/arm areas of M1 and M1 + lateral premotor cortex (LPMC) in two monkeys. The unilateral lesions were contralateral to the monkey's preferred hand, which was established in pre-lesion testing as the hand used most often to acquire raisins in a foraging board task in which the monkey was free to use either hand to acquire the treats. The lesions initially produced a clear paresis of the contralesional hand and use of only the ipsilesional hand to acquire raisins in the foraging board task. However, beginning about 3 weeks after the lesion the monkey spontaneously began using the impaired contralesional hand in the foraging board task and increased use of that hand over the next few tests. Moreover, the monkeys clearly used precision grasp to acquire the raisins in a similar manner to pre-lesion performances, although grasp durations were longer. Although the monkeys used the contralesional hand more often than the ipsilesional hand in some post-lesion testing sessions they did not recover to use the hand as often as in pre-lesion testing when the preferred hand was used almost exclusively. These findings suggest that recovery of fine hand/digit motor function after localized damage to the lateral frontal motor areas in rhesus monkeys does not require forced use of the impaired hand.
finger dexterity grip

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