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Updated: May 17, 2026

Stimulating the Lip Motor Cortex with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Published on: June 14, 2014
Repetition-induced plasticity of motor representations of action sounds
Nathalie M-P Bourquin1, Alexandre Simonin, Stephanie Clarke
1Service de Neuropsychologie et de Neuroréhabilitation, CHUV, Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. nathalie.bourquin@chuv.ch
Abstract:
Action-related sounds are known to increase the excitability of motoneurones within the primary motor cortex (M1), but the role of this auditory input remains unclear. We investigated repetition priming-induced plasticity, which is characteristic of semantic representations, in M1 by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation pulses to the hand area. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were larger while subjects were listening to sounds related versus unrelated to manual actions. Repeated exposure to the same manual-action-related sound yielded a significant decrease in MEPs when right, hand area was stimulated; no repetition effect was observed for manual-action-unrelated sounds. The shared repetition priming characteristics suggest that auditory input to the right primary motor cortex is part of auditory semantic representations.
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