Neural Basis of Sensory Learning: Brain Regions

Basic Science Clinical Trial

Official title: Neural Basis of Sensory Learning: Brain Regions

Status Recruiting

Clinical Trial Summary

The purpose of this study is to understand how the sensory and motor areas of the brain work together to keep a person's hand movements accurate (sensorimotor learning). The investigators hope this information may be useful one day to improve rehabilitation techniques in patients with brain lesions.

Clinical Trial Description

To make accurate movements, the brain needs to compensate for the frequent changes in the environment one experiences (lighting conditions, slippery floors, etc). For example, when one reaches to grab an object underwater, there are significant challenges the brain must overcome. Water is more viscous than air, so motor planning must take the increased resistance into account. In addition, light is bent by water, so one sees the underwater hand in a different location from where one feels it with body position sense (proprioception, from sensors in the joints and muscles). While initially movement errors occur in a situation like this, a healthy person quickly learns to compensate. This compensation can take different forms. The brain can shift the proprioceptive estimate closer to the visual estimate of hand position or vice versa (sensory realignment), or the brain can compensate for any movement errors by altering the motor commands to the arm (motor adaptation). Failure to compensate for such changes results in inaccurate movement, raising the potential for accidents and injuries, but how the healthy brain carries out these functions, and how they could be strengthened in populations with sensory and motor deficits (e.g. stroke), is unknown. With greater understanding of these processes in the healthy brain, it may one day be possible to develop rehabilitation strategies that target a patient's unique mix of sensory and motor deficits. A robust way to identify whether a brain region plays a role in a behavior is to temporarily modulate its excitability in healthy people using non-invasive brain stimulation. This is commonly done in research with a short sequence of low-intensity transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), also known as repetitive TMS (rTMS). rTMS is used clinically to treat conditions such as depression and is considered very low risk provided the generally-accepted screening criteria are met. In the research setting, this technique is widely used not only in healthy adults (as in this study) but also in children and people with concussion, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and more. In separate groups of subjects, the investigators will use a 40-second sequence of rTMS called continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over one of several brain regions of interest before the subject performs a reaching task known to involve sensory realignment (learning). If performance of the task is affected by cTBS for a given group (relative to the sham, or control, group), it means that brain region plays some role in that type of reaching task. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Basic Science

• NCT number: NCT05079516
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: Indiana University
• Contact: Hannah J Block, PhD
• Phone: 8128555390
• Email: hjblock@indiana.edu
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: October 26, 2021
• Completion date: December 2024