precentral areas

Self-regulation of interhemispheric asymmetry in humans

Five healthy right-handed subjects learned to control hemispheric asymmetry with biofeedback of the amplitude difference of slow cortical potentials between the left and the right precentral areas. Six training sessions were conducted with subject I, 12 sessions with subjects II and III, and 14 sessions, with subjects IV and V. Performance of four out of five subjects improved continuously as a function of sessions. Towards the end of training, these subjects demonstrated highly significant differentiation between conditions where right versus left precentral negativity was required. In subject V, no improvement was observed after 14 training sessions. The data indicate that most subjects can learn to self-generate fast electroencephalograph (EEG) differences between the left and the right sensorimotor cortical regions.