Human motor cortex activity during mental rotation

The functional role of human premotor and primary motor cortex during mental rotation has been studied using functional MRI at 3 T. Fourteen young, male subjects performed a mental rotation task in which they had to decide whether two visually presented cubes could be identical. Exploratory Fuzzy Cluster Analysis was applied to identify brain regions with stimulus-related time courses. This revealed one dominant cluster which included the parietal cortex, premotor cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that showed signal enhancement during the whole stimulus presentation period, reflecting cognitive processing. A second cluster, encompassing the contralateral primary motor cortex, showed activation exclusively after the button press response. This clear separation was possible in 3 subjects only, however. Based on these exploratory results, the hypothesis that primary motor cortex activity was related to button pressing only was tested using a parametric approach via a random-effects group analysis over all 14 subjects in SPM99. The results confirmed that the stimulus response via button pressing causes activation in the primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area while parietal cortex and mesial regions rostral to the supplementary motor area are recruited for the actual mental rotation process.