Abstract
Spinal cord injury (SCI) does not only produce a lack of sensory and motor function caudal to the level of injury, but it also leads to a progressive brain reorganization. Chronic SCI patients attempting to move their affected limbs present a significant reduction of brain activation in the motor cortex, which has been linked to the deafferentation. The aim of this work is to study the evolution of the motor-related brain activity during the first months after SCI. Eighteen subacute SCI patients were recruited to participate in bi-weekly experimental sessions during at least two months. Their EEG was recorded to analyze the temporal evolution of the event-related desynchronization (ERD) over the motor cortex, both during motor attempt and motor imagery of their paralyzed hands. The results show that the α and β ERD evolution after SCI is negatively correlated with the clinical progression of the patients during the first months after the injury. This work provides the first longitudinal study of the event-related desynchronization during the subacute phase of spinal cord injury. Furthermore, our findings reveal a strong association between the ERD changes and the clinical evolution of the patients. These results help to better understand the brain transformation after SCI, which is important to characterize the neuroplasticity mechanisms involved after this lesion and may lead to new strategies for rehabilitation and motor restoration of these patients.
Highlights
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating disease with a global incidence of 29.5 per million inhabitants per year, and a prevalence of 485 per million inhabitants [1]
This paper reported for the first time the temporal evolution of the event-related desynchronization produced by motor attempt and imagery of the upper limb in patients with tetraplegia caused by SCI
Our results show that there is a strong association between the clinical progression of a SCI patient and the trend of his/her event-related desynchronization (ERD) activations during the attempt of motion
Summary
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating disease with a global incidence of 29.5 per million inhabitants per year, and a prevalence of 485 per million inhabitants [1]. Its main consequence is a loss of motor and sensory function caudal to the level of injury. SCI results in a progressive brain reorganization, which leads to null or significantly reduced brain activations over the motor cortex during the attempt or imagery of the affected limbs [2,3,4,5]. This decrease of activity has been explained by a significant reduction in gray matter observed after a long. Evolution of EEG Motor Rhythms after SCI: A Longitudinal Study roles of these authors are articulated in the “author contributions” section
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