Asymmetric transcallosal conduction delay leads to finer bimanual coordination

Abstract

It has been theorized that hemispheric dominance and a more segregated information processing have evolved to overcome long conduction delay through the corpus callosum (TCD) but that this may still impact behavioral performance mostly in tasks requiring high timing accuracy. Nevertheless, a thorough understanding of the temporal features of interhemispheric communication is missing due to methodological shortcomings. Here, we show in the motor system that TCD can be measured from transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) -evoked potentials (TEPs): by integrating TEPs with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and peripheral measures of interhemispheric inhibition (i.e., the ipsilateral silent period-iSP), we show that P15 TEP component reflects TCD between motor areas. Importantly, we report that better bimanual coordination is achieved when TCD between motor areas is asymmetric. These results suggest that interhemispheric communication can be optimized through asymmetric connectivity, in which information transfer is faster from the dominant hemisphere to the non-dominant hemisphere.