Abstract
This study examined brain activation in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) to reveal areas that may contribute to poor movement execution and/or abundant motor overflow. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, 13 boys with DCD (mean age = 9.6 years ±0.8) and 13 typically developing controls (mean age = 9.3 years ±0.6) were scanned performing two tasks (finger sequencing and hand clenching) with their dominant hand, while a four-finger motion sensor recorded contralateral motor overflow on their non-dominant hand. Despite displaying increased motor overflow on both functional tasks during scanning, there were no obvious activation deficits in the DCD group to explain the abundant motor overflow seen. However, children with DCD were found to display decreased activation in the left superior frontal gyrus on the finger-sequencing task, an area which plays an integral role in executive and spatially oriented processing. Decreased activation was also seen in the left inferior frontal gyrus, an area typically active during the observation and imitation of hand movements. Finally, increased activation in the right postcentral gyrus was seen in children with DCD, which may reflect increased reliance on somatosensory information during the execution of complex fine motor tasks.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the radiology staff from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and Princess Margaret hospital involved in this project, and the children and parents for their time and participation. We would also like to thank Mag Design and Engineering who created the motion sensor glove. This project was funded by a Research Development Award from the University of Western Australia.
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The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical standard
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Human Research Ethics Committees at the University of Western Australia (RA/4/1/2572) and Princess Margaret Hospital for Children (1804) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all parents/guardians and verbal assent from individual participants included in the study.
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Licari, M.K., Billington, J., Reid, S.L. et al. Cortical functioning in children with developmental coordination disorder: a motor overflow study. Exp Brain Res 233, 1703–1710 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-015-4243-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-015-4243-7