Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 12, No. 11, 1157-1170,
November 2002
© 2002 Oxford University Press
The Role of Rostral Brodmann Area 6 in Mental-operation Tasks: an Integrative Neuroimaging Approach
1 Human Brain Research Center, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan, , 2 Human Motor Control Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA, , 3 PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, Kawaguchi, , 4 Laboratory of Cerebral Integration, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, , 5 Department of Nuclear Medicine, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, , 6 Biomedical Imaging Research Center, Fukui Medical University, Fukui and , 7 Autonomic Research Project, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Japan
Address correspondence to Manabu Honda, Laboratory of Cerebral Integration, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, 38 Nishigonaka, Myodaiji-cho, Okazaki 444-8585, Japan. Email: honda{at}nips.ac.jp.
Recent evidence indicates that classical ‘motor’ areas may also have cognitive functions. We performed three neuroimaging experiments to investigate the functional neuroanatomy underlying three types of nonmotor mental-operation tasks: numerical, verbal, and spatial. (i) Positron emission tomography showed that parts of the posterior frontal cortex, which are consistent with the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and the rostral part of the dorsolateral premotor cortex (PMdr), were active during all three tasks. We also observed activity in the posterior parietal cortex and cerebellar hemispheres during all three tasks. Electrophysiological monitoring confirmed that there were no skeletomotor, oculomotor or articulatory movements during task performance. (ii) Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that PMdr activity during the mental-operation tasks was localized in the depths of the superior precentral sulcus, which substantially overlapped the region active during complex finger movements and was located dorsomedial to the presumptive frontal eye fields. (iii) Single-trial fMRI showed a transient increase in activity time-locked to the performance of mental operations in the pre-SMA and PMdr. The results of the present study suggest that the PMdr is important in the rule-based association of symbolic cues and responses in both motor and nonmotor behaviors.
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