Figure 1.

A, The preparatory cue consisted of two brackets, the “soccer goals.” The imperative, a circle or “soccer ball,” indicated the required response in all tasks. Participants were asked to shoot the ball in the appropriate goal by making an abduction movement of the corresponding index finger or pinky. Note that in the uni_left and uni_right tasks, subjects were asked to imagine they had the left or right hand, respectively, in the middle of the screen; in the bilateral task, the hands were imagined on the sides of the screen. B, Sequence and timing of events in experiment 1: A fixation marker (100 ms) was followed 900 ms later by a preparatory cue that lasted for a fixed delay (900 ms). An imperative signal then appeared (300 ms), indicating that the response should be initiated. A single TMS pulse was applied over the right M1 at eight possible timings during one of three epochs (baseline, delay, movement).