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Brain Advance Access first published online on February 10, 2005
This version published online on March 2, 2005
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awh430
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org
Received August 4, 2004
Revised December 29, 2004
Accepted January 5, 2005

Article

Selective impairment of hand mental rotation in patients with focal hand dystonia

Mirta Fiorio 1, Michele Tinazzi 2, and Salvatore M. Aglioti 3*

1 Dipartimento di Scienze Neurologiche e della Visione, Sezione Fisiologia Umana, Università degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italy
2 Unità Operativa di Neurologia Ospedale Civile Borgo Trento, Verona, Italy
3 Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università ‘La Sapienza’ and Centro Ricerche di Neuropsicologia, IRCCS, Fondazione Santa Lucia, Roma, Italy

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Salvatore M. Aglioti, E-mail: salvatoremaria.aglioti{at}uniroma1.it


  Abstract

Summary Mental rotation of body parts determines activation of cortical and subcortical systems involved in motor planning and execution, such as motor and premotor areas and basal ganglia. These structures are severely impaired in several movement disorders, including dystonia. Writer's cramp is the most common form of focal hand dystonia in which symptoms manifest mainly during writing. The present study aims to investigate whether patients affected by writer's cramp present with difficulties in tasks involving mental rotation of body parts and whether any impairments are specific to the affected hand or generalized to other body parts. For this purpose we tested 10 patients with right writer's cramp and 10 healthy control subjects. Stimuli consisted of realistic photographs of different views of hands and feet presented on a computer monitor in different orientations with respect to the upright canonical orientation. On each trial, subjects gave a laterality judgement, that is, they reported verbally whether the presented body part was left or right. Patients with writer's cramp presented mental rotation deficits specific to the hand, that is, the body part affected by the motor disturbances. Importantly, deficits were present during mental rotation of both the right and the left unaffected hand, thus suggesting that the observed alterations may be independent and even exist prior to overt manifestations of dystonia.

Keywords: basal ganglia; body schema; focal hand dystonia; hand; mental rotation.
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