Research Article Brain Activity during Lower-Limb Movement with Manual Facilitation: An fMRI Study Patrícia Maria Duarte de Almeida, 1,2 Ana Isabel Correia Matos de Ferreira Vieira, 1,2 Nádia Isabel Silva Canário, 2,3 Miguel Castelo-Branco, 3 and Alexandre Lemos de Castro Caldas 2 1 Alcoit˜ ao School of Health Sciences, Rua Conde Bar˜ ao, Alcoit˜ ao, 2649-506 Alcabideche, Portugal 2 Institute of Health Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal, Palma de Cima, 1649-023 Lisbon, Portugal 3 Visual Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute for Biomedical Imaging in Life Sciences (IBILI), ICNAS, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Azinhaga de Santa Comba, 3000-548 Coimbra, Portugal Correspondence should be addressed to Patr´ ıcia Maria Duarte de Almeida; patriciamdalmeida@gmail.com Received 4 September 2014; Revised 11 November 2014; Accepted 17 December 2014 Academic Editor: Di Lazzaro Vincenzo Copyright © 2015 Patr´ ıcia Maria Duarte de Almeida et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Brain activity knowledge of healthy subjects is an important reference in the context of motor control and reeducation. While the normal brain behavior for upper-limb motor control has been widely explored, the same is not true for lower-limb control. Also the efects that diferent stimuli can evoke on movement and respective brain activity are important in the context of motor potentialization and reeducation. For a better understanding of these processes, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to collect data of 10 healthy subjects performing lower-limb multijoint functional movement under three stimuli: verbal stimulus, manual facilitation, and verbal + manual facilitation. Results showed that, with verbal stimulus, both lower limbs elicit bilateral cortical brain activation; with manual facilitation, only the lef lower limb (LLL) elicits bilateral activation while the right lower limb (RLL) elicits contralateral activation; verbal + manual facilitation elicits bilateral activation for the LLL and contralateral activation for the RLL. Manual facilitation also elicits subcortical activation in white matter, the thalamus, pons, and cerebellum. Deactivations were also found for lower-limb movement. Manual facilitation is stimulus capable of generating brain activity in healthy subjects. Stimuli need to be specifc for bilateral activation and regarding which brain areas we aim to activate. 1. Introduction Te knowledge of normal brain activity during several tasks gives insight for both normal and abnormal behavior [1]. Brain activity knowledge of healthy subjects is an important reference in the context of motor control. Tis understanding of mechanisms underlying motor control and relearning is the basis for neurosciences development of frameworks for motor performance potentialization or reeducation. In the context of neurorehabilitation, this is shown in the recovery of disturbances which tend to present similar brain networks to those of healthy subjects [2–4] as the result of neuroplasticity [5]. Brain behavior is a complex task, being related with several aspects like somatotopic identifcation, activations and deactivations [6], sequences and diferentiations of acti- vations, interconnectivity, metabolic changes, and synaptic transmissions, among others. While the normal brain behavior for upper-limb motor control has been widely explored, the same is not true for lower-limb control. It is however known that, in addition to motor and premotor areas, other areas such as somatosensory and limbic areas and basal nuclei and cerebellum structures are involved in the process of motor control [7, 8] of healthy subjects. Specifcally, homunculus representations of the lower limb on motor and somatosensory and cerebellum areas are activated [9]. However, most of the studies refer to single-joint movements, not refecting the complexity of functional movements. Tus, the identifcation of somato- topic maps of brain activity during complex movements Hindawi Publishing Corporation Neurology Research International Volume 2015, Article ID 701452, 14 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/701452