NCT05739994

Frontal and Parietal Contributions to Proprioception and Motor Skill Learning

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 118 (actual)
• Sponsor: Indiana University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 45 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to understand how the different regions of the brain affect our sense of limbs in space (proprioception) and in turn our hand movements (motor skill learning). This information might help us one day to generate better rehabilitation protocols to help patients with movement deficits.

Detailed description

Moving our hands accurately, and learning new movement skills, depends on accurate sensory information. One of the sensory inputs which is crucial to make accurate movements is proprioception (sense of our limbs in space). Failure in estimating hand position results in inaccurate movement, raising the potential for accidents and injuries, but how the healthy brain carries out these functions, and how they could be strengthened in populations with sensory and motor deficits (e.g. stroke), is unknown. With greater understanding of these processes in the healthy brain, it may one day be possible to develop rehabilitation strategies that target a patient's unique mix of sensory and motor deficits. A robust way to identify whether a brain region plays a role in a behavior is to temporarily modulate its excitability in healthy people using non-invasive brain stimulation. This is commonly done in research with a short sequence of low-intensity transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), also known as repetitive TMS (rTMS). rTMS is used clinically to treat conditions such as depression and is considered very low risk provided the generally accepted screening criteria are met. In the research setting, this technique is widely used not only in healthy adults (as in this study) but also in children and people with concussion, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and more. In separate groups of subjects, we will use rTMS over one of several brain regions of interest before the subject In separate groups of subjects, we will use a 40-second sequence of rTMS called continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over one of several brain regions of interest before the subject performs performs proprioceptive and skill learning tasks known to involve sensory and motor skill (learning). If performance of the task is affected by rTMS for a given group (relative to the sham, or control, group), it means that brain region plays some role in that type of proprioceptive or skill task.

Conditions

• Basic Science

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation	Continuous theta burst TMS (cTBS) will be delivered to a location on the head. cTBS consists of 600 low-intensity TMS pulses delivered over 40 seconds in a pattern of 50 Hz triplets delivered at 5 Hz.
OTHER	Sham theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation	Continuous theta burst TMS (cTBS) will be delivered near the head, while an unplugged TMS coil is held at the vertex. No current will be induced in the head with this procedure.

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-06-09
• Primary completion: 2024-12-19
• Completion: 2024-12-19
• First posted: 2023-02-22
• Last updated: 2025-12-05
• Results posted: 2025-12-05

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States