Reorganization and enhanced functional connectivity of motor areas in repetitive ankle movements after training in locomotor attention

We examined the functional changes in the activity of the cerebral areas involved in motor tasks, prior to and following a 1-week period of locomotor attention training consisting of physical and mental practice, in normal subjects. In a previous study, we examined the effect of the same kind of training on motor circuits using an fMRI paradigm of motor imagery. In this work, we investigated whether the expanded activations found in the previous study were present also using an overt foot motor task consisting of ankle dorsiflexion; a control task requiring hand movements was also administered. In this article, we also discuss the changes in functional connectivity between the pretraining and posttraining conditions during foot movements. The foot task showed a posttraining reorganization of the sensorimotor areas, which is in line with earlier studies on lower limb motor learning, while the control hand movement task only produced a modification in the left premotor cortex. These results confirm the effect of training on functional reorganization and underline its task specificity. After training, we also observed enhanced connectivity in the sensorimotor areas, suggesting that functional connectivity of the sensorimotor network can be modulated by focusing attention on the movements involved in ambulation.