Severity of Writer's Cramp is Related to Faulty Motor Preparation

Abstract

We characterized, in 37 writer's cramp (WC) patients and 14 healthy volunteers (HV), the buildup of motor representations contralateral ("intended") and ispsilateral ("unintended") to the movement to be produced and the excitability changes in left primary motor cortex during the early reaction time (RT) of a pre-cued reaching movement to pick up a pen with either hand to write. We also tested the excitability of interhemispheric pathways from right dorsal premotor and motor cortices to left motor cortex. During early RT (1) the motor cortex excitability of unintended muscle representations did not decrease in patients as in HV and (2) the connection from the contralateral dorsal premotor cortex to the "intended" motor representation did not function in patients. In HV, the efficiency of intracortical GABA-ergic circuits at rest predicted the degree of excitability changes in the intended motor representation in the early RT. This was not true in patients who had lower efficiency of GABA-ergic circuits. Interestingly, the more severe was the writing impairment, the higher was the level of excitability in the intended and unintended motor representations. It demonstrates, for the first time, that abnormal motor preparation influences the severity of the writing impairment in WC patients.