Effects of Hand Intrinsic Muscle Facilitation and Functional Task Training on Cerebral Motor Evoked Potential after 1 Hz Low-Frequency rTMS in Stroke Patients

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of hand intrinsic muscles facilitation and functional task training with 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on cerebral motor cortex activity in stroke patients and to investigate the effectiveness of stroke rehabilitation. In this study, 20 adult stroke patients were randomly selected and divided into two groups of 10 each other. In the experimental group, hand intrinsic muscles facilitation and functional task training were performed after 1 Hz low frequency for 20 minutes and simple upper limb task training was performed in the control group. To investigate the changes of cerebral motor cortex activity after intervention, we measured Motor evoked potential (MEP) amplitude and latency. In both groups, MEP amplitude increased and MEP latency decreased after intervention. There was a significant difference between the two groups in MEP amplitude and latency (p 0.01) (p 0.05). Therefore, hand intrinsic muscles facilitation and functional task training with 1 Hz low frequency (rTMS) of stroke patients showed positive results in MEP amplitude and latency change of the injured cerebral cortex after stroke.