Motor timing is shared between limbs during symmetric bimanual movements

Summary: The brain activity during bimanual movements exhibits a unique pattern not seen when either arm is moved alone. Existing theories suggest that the distinct pattern may come from the integration of motor timing between the hemispheres, but specifically how they combine remains unclear. Here,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Atsushi Takagi, Kazuaki Honda
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-08-01
Series:iScience
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004225014075
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Summary: The brain activity during bimanual movements exhibits a unique pattern not seen when either arm is moved alone. Existing theories suggest that the distinct pattern may come from the integration of motor timing between the hemispheres, but specifically how they combine remains unclear. Here, we measured the muscle activation timing of the left and right shoulders during a unimanual and bimanual periodic force control task and compared the empirical results with the predictions from three competing models of motor timing integration. Our results are most consistent with the view that the motor timing of the dominant hemisphere can be shared to improve the non-dominant arm’s motor timing by up to 20%. However, the sharing of motor timing occurs more readily during symmetric bimanual movements relative to antisymmetric movements. Our results highlight the unique neural processes underlying symmetric coordination and clarify the circumstances in which motor timing can be shared between the limbs.
ISSN:2589-0042