Comparison of movement related cortical potential in healthy people and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients

Ying Gu,Dario Farina,Ander R Murguialday,Kim Dremstrup,Niels Birbaumer

doi:10.3389/fnins.2013.00065

Abstract

Objective: To understand the brain motor functions and neurophysiological changes due to motor disorder by comparing electroencephalographic data between healthy people and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients.Methods: The movement related cortical potential (MRCP) was recorded from seven healthy subjects and four ALS patients. They were asked to imagine right wrist extension at two speeds (fast and slow). The peak negativity (PN) and rebound rate (RR) were extracted from MRCP for comparison.Results: The statistical analysis has showed that there was no significant difference in PN between the healthy and the ALS subjects. However, the healthy subjects presented faster RR than ALS during both fast and slow movement imagination.Conclusions: The weaker RR of ALS patients might reflect the impairment of motor output pathways or the degree of motor degeneration.Significance: The comparison between healthy people and ALS patients provides a way to explain the movement disorder through brain electrical signal. In addition, the characteristics of MRCP could be used to monitor and guide brain plasticity in patients.

Highlights

Movement Related Cortical Potential (MRCP) represents the electroencephalographic (EEG) evidence of motor cortical involvement during movement and movement preparation (Kornhuber and Deecke, 1965)
The weaker Rebound Rate (RR) of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients might reflect the impairment of motor output pathways or the degree of motor degeneration
The MRCP belongs to the family of slow cortical potentials (SCPs) which reflect the summed dendritic postsynaptic potentials of cortical pyramidal neurons arranged perpendicular to the cortical surface (Birbaumer et al, 1990; Niedermeyer and Lopes da Silva, 1999)

Summary

Introduction

Movement Related Cortical Potential (MRCP) represents the electroencephalographic (EEG) evidence of motor cortical involvement during movement and movement preparation (Kornhuber and Deecke, 1965). The MRCP belongs to the family of slow cortical potentials (SCPs) which reflect the summed dendritic postsynaptic potentials of cortical pyramidal neurons arranged perpendicular to the cortical surface (Birbaumer et al, 1990; Niedermeyer and Lopes da Silva, 1999). It is detected usually by averaging repeated EEG epochs in the time domain. The post-movement potential is believed to reflect the reafferent feedback and fine control of a movement (Jahanshahi and Hallett, 2003; do Nascimento et al, 2005). In this study we extracted Peak Negativity (PN) (the maximal point of BP) and positive Rebound Rate (RR) of post-movement potential for analysis

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion