Publication: A broadband acoustic stimulus is more likely than a pure tone to elicit a startle reflex and prepared movements

PDF  In order to be able to confidently assert that any RT speeding following a startling acoustic stimulus (SAS) is the result of activation in subcortical areas related to the startle reflex, a reliable indication that a startle reflex actually occurred is required. While the eye-blink response is typically used…

Continue reading

Publication: Responses to startling acoustic stimuli indicate that movement‐related activation is constant prior to action: a replication with an alternate interpretation

PDF  This study is a replication of a previous experiment that investigated how movement-related brain activation changes as a go-stimulus approaches in time. The previous experiment used a startle to show that activity increased in short time prior to the go-signal. However, startle activity was not reported, so this was only…

Continue reading

Publication: Increased stability of bimanual coordination following transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied over the supplementary motor area (SMA)

 In this study subjects performed a bimanual coordination task, where spontaneous transitions between states is observed at higher oscillation frequencies. For example, when limbs are moved in a parallel fashion (like windshield wipers on a car) a transition is seen at faster speeds whereby subjects spontaneously change to performing mirror-symmetrical…

Continue reading

Publication: Inhibition of motor-related activation during a simple reaction time task requiring visuomotor mental rotation

PDF  Seminal work by Georgopoulos and colleagues (1987) showed that reaction time (RT) increased when a rotational mental transformation had to be calculated prior to responding. A loud acoustic stimulus can be used to trigger prepared responses, so this effect was used in the current experiment to determine how preparatory activation levels in…

Continue reading