This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Lackner, E. Articles by Hummelsheim, H. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Lackner, E. Articles by Hummelsheim, H. Pubmed/NCBI databases Medline Plus Health Information Stroke Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Motor-evoked potentials are facilitated during perceptual identification of hand position in healthy subjects and stroke patients

Horst Hummelsheim

NRZ Neurologisches Rehabilitationszentrum Leipzig, Universität Leipzig, Germany

Objective: To delineate the facilitatory and/or inhibitory influence of relevant and irrelevant sensory afferent information to the motor cortex. The study is based on the assumption that sensorimotor coupling is crucial for motor learning and recovery.

Design: The interaction of a standard transcranial magnetic stimulus (TMS) with the facilitatory and/or inhibitory influence that proprioceptive afferent information exerts on the motor cortex was investigated.

Setting: A neurological rehabilitation hospital.

Subjects: Sixteen healthy subjects and 14 stroke patients.

Main outcome measures: Amplitudes and latencies of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from the extensor carpi radialis muscle. The influence of a sensory discrimination task was compared with the influence of a sensory input irrelevant for the task and to a verbal memory task. Recordings were taken after the hand had been moved passively in one of four different positions.

Results: In the first trial, TMS was applied without any demand on the subjects. In the second trial, subjects were asked to identify the respective hand position and in the third trial a noun presented at a respective hand position had to be memorized and reproduced after TMS. The sensory discrimination task exerted by far the most prominent facilitatory effect on MEP amplitudes and latencies. An unspecific, albeit reproducible influence on MEP amplitudes was observed when a noun presented at a respective hand position had to be remembered.

Conclusions: Using a neurophysiological approach the study demonstrates that a sensory discrimination task based on relevant afferent information to motor centres of the brain forms a prominent facilitatory intervention for those muscle groups that are involved in the task. This holds true for healthy subjects and for hemiparetic stroke patients.

Clinical Rehabilitation, Vol. 17, No. 6, 648-655 (2003)
DOI: 10.1191/0269215503cr660oa


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				C. I.E. Renner, H. Woldag, and H. Hummelsheim Central Compensation at Short Muscle Range Is Differentially Affected in Cortical Versus Subcortical Strokes Stroke, August 1, 2006; 37(8): 2076 - 2080. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]