RESEARCH ARTICLE Cerebral Activations Related to Writing and Drawing with Each Hand

Background Writing is a sequential motor action based on sensorimotor integration in visuospatial and linguistic functional domains. To test the hypothesis of lateralized circuitry concerning spa-tial and language components involved in such action, we employed an fMRI paradigm in-cluding writing and drawing with each hand. In this way, writing-related contributions of dorsal and ventral premotor regions in each hemisphere were assessed, together with ef-fects in wider distributed circuitry. Given a right-hemisphere dominance for spatial action, right dorsal premotor cortex dominance was expected in left-hand writing while dominance of the left ventral premotor cortex was expected during right-hand writing. Methods Sixteen healthy right-handed subjects were scanned during audition-guided writing of short sentences and simple figure drawing without visual feedback. Tapping with a pencil served as a basic control task for the two higher-order motor conditions. Activation differences were assessed with Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM)