Functional Connectivity Between Human Motor and Somatosensory Areas During a Multifinger Tapping Task: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Hand representation maps of the primate primary motor (M1) and somatosensory (SI) cortices exhibit plasticity, with their spatial extent modifiable through training. While activation and map enlargement during tapping tasks are well documented, the directionality of information flow between these regions remains unclear. We applied Information Imbalance Gain Causality (IIG) to examine the propagation and temporal dynamic of BOLD activity among Area 4 (precentral gyrus), Area 3a (fundus of the central sulcus), and SI areas (postcentral gyrus). Data were collected from both hemispheres of nine participants performing alternating right-left hand finger tapping inside a 1.5T fMRI scan. The results revealed strong information flow from both the precentral and postcentral gyri toward the sulcus during tapping task, with weaker bidirectional exchange between the gyri. When not engaged in tapping, both gyri communicated with each other and the sulcus. During active tapping, flow bypassed the sulcus, favoring a more direct postcentral to precentral way. Overtime, postcentral to sulcus influence strengthened during non task periods, but diminished during tapping. These findings suggest that M1, Area 3a, and SI areas form a dynamic network that supports rapid learning processing, where Area 3a of the sulcus may contribute to maintaining representational plasticity during complex tapping tasks.