Dynamic context-dependent somatotopy of the primary motor representation

Background and Objective: The methodological concept of the „motor hotspot“ is a typical notion in transcranial brain stimulation techniques. Yet, constraints on the conception of a discrete somatotopy of the human primary motor cortex (M1), e.g. the diversity of representational clusters (Schieber 2001), overlapping representations (Sanes et al. 1995) as well as dependence on hand posture (Wassermann et al. 1998) and use- dependent adaptability (Classen et at. 1998) argue that the notion of a static hotspot lacks plausibility. To test the alternative hypothesis of dynamic context- dependent somatotopy we invest…