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The Journal of Neuroscience, September 23, 2009, 29(38):11841-11851; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2955-09.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Coding of Visual Space during Motor Preparation: Approaching Objects Rapidly Modulate Corticospinal Excitability in Hand-Centered Coordinates

Tamar R. Makin,^1,2 * Nicholas P. Holmes,^1,3,4 * Claudio Brozzoli,^1,5,6 Yves Rossetti,^1,5,6 and Alessandro Farnè^1,5,6

¹Inserm, Unité Mixte de Recherche S 864 "Espace et Action," F-69500 Bron, France, ²Department of Neurobiology and ³Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel, ⁴Department of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AL, United Kingdom, ⁵Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, F-69000 Lyon, France, and ⁶Hospices Civils de Lyon, Institut Fédératif de Neurosciences de Lyon, Mouvement et Handicap, F-69003 Lyon, France

Correspondence should be addressed to Nicholas P. Holmes, Department of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, Reading University, Reading RG6 6AL, UK. Email: npholmes{at}neurobiography.info

Defensive behaviors, such as withdrawing your hand to avoid potentially harmful approaching objects, rely on rapid sensorimotor transformations between visual and motor coordinates. We examined the reference frame for coding visual information about objects approaching the hand during motor preparation. Subjects performed a simple visuomanual task while a task-irrelevant distractor ball rapidly approached a location either near to or far from their hand. After the distractor ball appearance, single pulses of transcranial magnetic stimulation were delivered over the subject's primary motor cortex, eliciting motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in their responding hand. MEP amplitude was reduced when the ball approached near the responding hand, both when the hand was on the left and the right of the midline. Strikingly, this suppression occurred very early, at 70–80 ms after ball appearance, and was not modified by visual fixation location. Furthermore, it was selective for approaching balls, since static visual distractors did not modulate MEP amplitude. Together with additional behavioral measurements, we provide converging evidence for automatic hand-centered coding of visual space in the human brain.

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Received June 22, 2009; revised July 13, 2009; accepted July 18, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Nicholas P. Holmes, Department of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, Reading University, Reading RG6 6AL, UK. Email: npholmes{at}neurobiography.info

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