OCEANO 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 38: Balance Disorder, Posterior Parietal Cortex, Premotor Cortex
Document Summary
Learning goals: anatomy of the brain, micro anatomy of the movement sectors. The primary motor cortex, or m1, is one of the principal brain areas involved in motor function. M1 is located in the frontal lobe of the brain, along a bump called the precentral gyrus (figure 1a). The role of the primary motor cortex is to generate neural impulses that control the execution of movement. The amount of brain matter devoted to any particular body part represents the amount of control that the primary motor cortex has over that body part. For example, a lot of cortical space is required to control the complex movements of the hand and fingers, and these body parts have larger representations in m1 than the trunk or legs, whose muscle patterns are relatively simple. This disproportionate map of the body in the motor cortex is called the motor homunculus.
