scholarly journals Effects of a single mental chronometry training session in subacute stroke patients – a randomized controlled trial

Author(s):  
Joachim Liepert ◽  
Jana Stürner ◽  
Imke Büsching ◽  
Aida Sehle ◽  
Mircea A. Schoenfeld

Abstract Background Motor imagery training might be helpful in stroke rehabilitation. This study explored if a single session of motor imagery (MI) training induces performance changes in mental chronometry (MC), motor execution, or changes of motor excitability. Methods Subacute stroke patients (n = 33) participated in two training sessions. The order was randomized. One training consisted of a mental chronometry task, the other training was a hand identification task, each lasting 30 min. Before and after the training session, the Box and Block Test (BBT) was fully executed and also performed as a mental version which served as a measure of MC. A subgroup analysis based on the presence of sensory deficits was performed. Patients were allocated to three groups (no sensory deficits, moderate sensory deficits, severe sensory deficits). Motor excitability was measured by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pre and post training. Amplitudes of motor evoked potentials at rest and during pre-innervation as well as the duration of cortical silent period were measured in the affected and the non-affected hand. Results Pre-post differences of MC showed an improved MC after the MI training, whereas MC was worse after the hand identification training. Motor execution of the BBT was significantly improved after mental chronometry training but not after hand identification task training. Patients with severe sensory deficits performed significantly inferior in BBT execution and MC abilities prior to the training session compared to patients without sensory deficits or with moderate sensory deficits. However, pre-post differences of MC were similar in the 3 groups. TMS results were not different between pre and post training but showed significant differences between affected and unaffected side. Conclusion Even a single training session can modulate MC abilities and BBT motor execution in a task-specific way. Severe sensory deficits are associated with poorer motor performance and poorer MC ability, but do not have a negative impact on training-associated changes of mental chronometry. Studies with longer treatment periods should explore if the observed changes can further be expanded. Trial registration DRKS, DRKS00020355, registered March 9th, 2020, retrospectively registered

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Confalonieri ◽  
Giuseppe Pagnoni ◽  
Lawrence W. Barsalou ◽  
Justin Rajendra ◽  
Simon B. Eickhoff ◽  
...  

Aims. While studies on healthy subjects have shown a partial overlap between the motor execution and motor imagery neural circuits, few have investigated brain activity during motor imagery in stroke patients with hemiparesis. This work is aimed at examining similarities between motor imagery and execution in a group of stroke patients. Materials and Methods. Eleven patients were asked to perform a visuomotor tracking task by either physically or mentally tracking a sine wave force target using their thumb and index finger during fMRI scanning. MIQ-RS questionnaire has been administered. Results and Conclusion. Whole-brain analyses confirmed shared neural substrates between motor imagery and motor execution in bilateral premotor cortex, SMA, and in the contralesional inferior parietal lobule. Additional region of interest-based analyses revealed a negative correlation between kinaesthetic imagery ability and percentage BOLD change in areas 4p and 3a; higher imagery ability was associated with negative and lower percentage BOLD change in primary sensorimotor areas during motor imagery.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niclas Braun ◽  
Cornelia Kranczioch ◽  
Joachim Liepert ◽  
Christian Dettmers ◽  
Catharina Zich ◽  
...  

Not much is known about how well stroke patients are able to perform motor imagery (MI) and which MI abilities are preserved after stroke. We therefore applied three different MI tasks (one mental chronometry task, one mental rotation task, and one EEG-based neurofeedback task) to a sample of postacute stroke patients (n=20) and age-matched healthy controls (n=20) for addressing the following questions: First, which of the MI tasks indicate impairment in stroke patients and are impairments restricted to the paretic side? Second, is there a relationship between MI impairment and sensory loss or paresis severity? And third, do the results of the different MI tasks converge? Significant differences between the stroke and control groups were found in all three MI tasks. However, only the mental chronometry task and EEG analysis revealed paresis side-specific effects. Moreover, sensitivity loss contributed to a performance drop in the mental rotation task. The findings indicate that although MI abilities may be impaired after stroke, most patients retain their ability for MI EEG-based neurofeedback. Interestingly, performance in the different MI measures did not strongly correlate, neither in stroke patients nor in healthy controls. We conclude that one MI measure is not sufficient to fully assess an individual’s MI abilities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (10) ◽  
pp. 3245-3248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young-Hyeon Bae ◽  
YoungJun Ko ◽  
HyunGeun Ha ◽  
So Yeon Ahn ◽  
WanHee Lee ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Wang ◽  
Jingna Zhang ◽  
Ye Zhang ◽  
Rubing Yan ◽  
Hongliang Liu ◽  
...  

Aims.Motor imagery has emerged as a promising technique for the improvement of motor function following stroke, but the mechanism of functional network reorganization in patients during this process remains unclear. The aim of this study is to evaluate the cortical motor network patterns of effective connectivity in stroke patients.Methods.Ten stroke patients with right hand hemiplegia and ten normal control subjects were recruited. We applied conditional Granger causality analysis (CGCA) to explore and compare the functional connectivity between motor execution and motor imagery.Results.Compared with the normal controls, the patient group showed lower effective connectivity to the primary motor cortex (M1), the premotor cortex (PMC), and the supplementary motor area (SMA) in the damaged hemisphere but stronger effective connectivity to the ipsilesional PMC and M1 in the intact hemisphere during motor execution. There were tighter connections in the cortical motor network in the patients than in the controls during motor imagery, and the patients showed more effective connectivity in the intact hemisphere.Conclusions.The increase in effective connectivity suggests that motor imagery enhances core corticocortical interactions, promotes internal interaction in damaged hemispheres in stroke patients, and may facilitate recovery of motor function.


2016 ◽  
pp. 120-127
Author(s):  
Dinh Toan Nguyen

Background: Dementia after stroke, particularly subacute period is often overlooked. Today the quality of human life is increasingly high, finding scales that have high value for detection of dementia in patients with stroke is increasingly interested. MoCA test is high sensitivity with mild dementia and identify more abnormalities of awareness caused by vascular, but MoCA have not been studied much in Vietnam. Objective: Assessing MoCA test in subacute stroke patients and compare MoCA versus MMSE in these patients. Subjects: 90 patients with subacute stroke period, these people are being treated at Department of cardiovascular internal medicine at Hue Central Hospital, from 7/2014 - 7/2015. Methods: cross-sectional description and analysis. Results: The mean age is 65.57 ± 13.38, accounting for 54.4% male and 45.6% female. Age, duration of illness has weak correlation with MoCA. The risk factors: hypertension, stroke ischemic transient, alcoholism, smoking, heart disease, diabetes, dyslipidemia related no statistical significance with MoCA. The proportion of dementia in subacute stroke according MoCA is 82.2%. The concordance between MoCA and MMSE was good (kappa = 0.684). Using DSM-IV criteria as the gold standard we found MoCA more valuable in the dementia diagnosis than MMSE (AUC 0.864 versus 0.774, p <0.05). Conclusion: The rate of dementia in stroke subacute period according MoCA is quite high. MoCA is valuable than MMSE in detecting dementia in patients with stroke subacute period, this scale is short, easy to implement so should put into using widely in clinical practice. Key words: MoCA test, subacute stroke, dementia


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1510
Author(s):  
Charles Morizio ◽  
Maxime Billot ◽  
Jean-Christophe Daviet ◽  
Stéphane Baudry ◽  
Christophe Barbanchon ◽  
...  

People who survive a stroke are often left with long-term neurologic deficits that induce, among other impairments, balance disorders. While virtual reality (VR) is growing in popularity for postural control rehabilitation in post-stroke patients, studies on the effect of challenging virtual environments, simulating common daily situations on postural control in post-stroke patients, are scarce. This study is a first step to document the postural response of stroke patients to different challenging virtual environments. Five subacute stroke patients and fifteen age-matched healthy adults were included. All participants underwent posturographic tests in control conditions (open and closed eyes) and virtual environment without (one static condition) and with avatars (four dynamic conditions) using a head-mounted device for VR. In dynamic environments, we modulated the density of the virtual crowd (dense and light crowd) and the avoidance space with the avatars (near or far). Center of pressure velocity was collected by trial throughout randomized 30-s periods. Results showed that more challenging conditions (dynamic condition) induced greater postural disturbances in stroke patients than in healthy counterparts. Our study suggests that virtual reality environments should be adjusted in light of obtaining more or less challenging conditions.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alkinoos Athanasiou ◽  
Chrysa Lithari ◽  
Konstantina Kalogianni ◽  
Manousos A. Klados ◽  
Panagiotis D. Bamidis

Introduction. Sensorimotor cortex is activated similarly during motor execution and motor imagery. The study of functional connectivity networks (FCNs) aims at successfully modeling the dynamics of information flow between cortical areas.Materials and Methods. Seven healthy subjects performed 4 motor tasks (real foot, imaginary foot, real hand, and imaginary hand movements), while electroencephalography was recorded over the sensorimotor cortex. Event-Related Desynchronization/Synchronization (ERD/ERS) of the mu-rhythm was used to evaluate MI performance. Source detection and FCNs were studied with eConnectome.Results and Discussion. Four subjects produced similar ERD/ERS patterns between motor execution and imagery during both hand and foot tasks, 2 subjects only during hand tasks, and 1 subject only during foot tasks. All subjects showed the expected brain activation in well-performed MI tasks, facilitating cortical source estimation. Preliminary functional connectivity analysis shows formation of networks on the sensorimotor cortex during motor imagery and execution.Conclusions. Cortex activation maps depict sensorimotor cortex activation, while similar functional connectivity networks are formed in the sensorimotor cortex both during actual and imaginary movements. eConnectome is demonstrated as an effective tool for the study of cortex activation and FCN. The implementation of FCN in motor imagery could induce promising advancements in Brain Computer Interfaces.


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