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Normalisation of brain connectivity through compensatory behaviour, despite congenital hand absence

Hahamy, Avital; Sotiropoulos, Stamatios N.; Henderson Slater, David; Malach, Rafael; Johansen-Berg, Heidi; Makin, Tamar R.

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Authors

Avital Hahamy

Stamatios N. Sotiropoulos

David Henderson Slater

Rafael Malach

Heidi Johansen-Berg

Tamar R. Makin



Abstract

Previously we showed, using task-evoked fMRI, that compensatory intact hand usage after amputation facilitates remapping of limb representations in the cortical territory of the missing hand (Makin et al., 2013a). Here we show that compensatory arm usage in individuals born without a hand (one-handers) reflects functional connectivity of spontaneous brain activity in the cortical hand region. Compared with two-handed controls, one-handers showed reduced symmetry of hand region inter-hemispheric resting-state functional connectivity and corticospinal white matter microstructure. Nevertheless, those one-handers who more frequently use their residual (handless) arm for typically bimanual daily tasks also showed more symmetrical functional connectivity of the hand region, demonstrating that adaptive behaviour drives long-range brain organisation. We therefore suggest that compensatory arm usage maintains symmetrical sensorimotor functional connectivity in one-handers. Since variability in spontaneous functional connectivity in our study reflects ecological behaviour, we propose that inter-hemispheric symmetry, typically observed in resting sensorimotor networks, depends on coordinated motor behaviour in daily life.

Citation

Hahamy, A., Sotiropoulos, S. N., Henderson Slater, D., Malach, R., Johansen-Berg, H., & Makin, T. R. (2015). Normalisation of brain connectivity through compensatory behaviour, despite congenital hand absence. eLife, 4, Article e04605. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04605.001

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 20, 2014
Publication Date Jan 6, 2015
Deposit Date Apr 5, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal eLife
Electronic ISSN 2050-084X
Publisher eLife Sciences Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 4
Article Number e04605
DOI https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04605.001
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/743651
Publisher URL https://elifesciences.org/articles/04605

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