Structural white matter changes in descending motor tracts correlate with improvements in motor impairment after undergoing a treatment course of tDCS and physical therapy.

Xin Zheng,Gottfried Schlaug

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00229

Abstract

Motor impairment after stroke has been related to the structural and functional integrity of corticospinal tracts including multisynaptic motor fibers and tracts such as the cortico-rubral-spinal and the cortico-tegmental-spinal tract. Furthermore, studies have shown that the concurrent use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with peripheral sensorimotor activities can improve motor impairment. We examined microstructural effects of concurrent non-invasive bihemispheric stimulation and physical/occupational therapy for 10 days on the structural components of the CST as well as other descending motor tracts which will be referred to here as alternate motor fibers (aMF). In this pilot study, ten chronic patients with a uni-hemispheric stroke underwent Upper-Extremity Fugl-Meyer assessments (UE-FM) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) for determining diffusivity measures such as fractional anisotropy (FA) before and after treatment in a section of the CST and aMF that spanned between the lower end of the internal capsule (below each patient’s lesion) and the upper pons region on the affected and unaffected hemisphere. The treated group (tDCS + PT/OT) showed significant increases in the proportional UE-FM scores (+21%; SD 10%), while no significant changes were observed in an untreated comparison group. Significant increases in FA (+0.007; SD 0.0065) were found in the ipsilesional aMF in the treated group while no significant changes were found in the contralesional aMF, in either CST, or in any tracts in the untreated group. The FA changes in the ipsilesional aMF significantly correlated with the proportional change in the UE-FM (r = 0.65; p < 0.05). The increase in FA might indicate an increase in motor fiber alignment, myelination, and overall fiber integrity. Crossed and uncrossed fibers from multiple cortical regions might be one reason why the aMF fiber system showed more plastic structural changes that correlate with motor improvements than the CST.

Highlights

Motor impairment after stroke has been related to the structural and functional integrity of descending corticospinal tracts (Canedo, 1997)
The main goal of our study was to determine whether a short-term experimental intervention consisting of non-invasive brain-stimulation using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for 30 min in combination with pyramidal tract (PT)/OT for 60 min for 2 × 5 days in a row could lead to changes in diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)-derived measures of major descending motor tracts
Participants The treated group (Age: 57.5 years, SD 12.9; Time PostStroke to Enrollment: 19.2 months, SD 17.4; Scan Interval: 34.7 days, SD 15.0; wCST-Lesion Load: 5.4 cc, SD 5.3) consisted of ten stroke patients (≥4 months after their first and only unihemisphere stroke) who participated in an experimental study consisting of a combination of dual transcranial direct current stimulation for 30 min while simultaneously receiving physical/occupational therapy (PT/OT) for 60 min and had DTI studies done before and after the intervention

Summary

Introduction

Motor impairment after stroke has been related to the structural and functional integrity of descending corticospinal tracts (Canedo, 1997). Research over the last decade has shown that stroke recovery can be facilitated by targeted non-invasive brain stimulation geared towards enhancing or diminishing local cortical excitability Techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS; Hummel et al, 2005; Mansur et al, 2005; Schlaug and Renga, 2008; Schlaug et al, 2008) have been used to up-regulate excitability in intact portions of ipsilesional (Hummel et al, 2005) or down-regulate excitability in contralesional motor cortex (Mansur et al, 2005). Similar findings using a dual hemispheric stimulation approach coupled with Constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) were made by Bolognini and colleagues (Bolognini et al, 2011) who reported greater effects in the group of patients receiving real stimulation compared to the group that received CIMT with only sham stimulation (Bolognini et al, 2011)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion