Neurorehabilitation and neural repair
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Neurorehabil Neural Repair · Jul 2011
Temporal effects of environmental enrichment-mediated functional improvement after experimental traumatic brain injury in rats.
Environmental enrichment (EE) enhances motor and cognitive performance after traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, whether the EE-mediated benefits are time dependent and task specific is unclear. A preliminary study, in which only half of the possible temporal manipulations were evaluated, revealed that the beneficial effects of enrichment were only observed when provided concurrently with specific training (ie, motor or cognitive), suggesting task-specific dependence. ⋯ These data support the conclusion from the previous study that EE-mediated functional improvement after TBI is contingent on task-specific neurobehavioral experience and extends those preliminary findings by demonstrating that the duration of enriched exposure is also important for functional recovery.
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Neurorehabil Neural Repair · May 2011
Weakening of synergist muscle coupling during reaching movement in stroke patients.
After hemiparetic stroke, coordination of the shoulder flexor and elbow extensor muscles during a reaching movement is impaired and contributes to poor performance. ⋯ This weakened functional coupling may contribute to poor reaching performance and could be a consequence of a loss of common drive at the frequency bands as a result of interruption of information flow in the corticospinal pathway.
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Neurorehabil Neural Repair · May 2011
Comparative StudyAbbreviated environmental enrichment enhances neurobehavioral recovery comparably to continuous exposure after traumatic brain injury.
Environmental enrichment (EE) is a complex living milieu that has been shown to enhance functional recovery versus standard (STD) housing after experimental traumatic brain injury (TBI) and therefore may be considered a rodent correlate of rehabilitation. However, the typical EE paradigm consists of continuous exposure to enrichment after TBI, which is inconsistent with the limited time frame in clinical rehabilitation. ⋯ These data demonstrate that abbreviated EE (6 hours) produces motor and cognitive benefits similar to continuous EE after TBI and thus may be considered a dose-relevant rehabilitation paradigm.
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Neurorehabil Neural Repair · Feb 2011
The reproducibility and convergent validity of the walking index for spinal cord injury (WISCI) in chronic spinal cord injury.
The Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury II (WISCI II) is a hierarchical scale that measures improvements in walking following spinal cord injury (SCI). The WISCI II has good face validity, concurrent validity, and reliability following acute SCI; however, psychometric properties need to be determined for chronic SCI. Because prior studies have demonstrated a relationship between lower-extremity motor scores (LEMS) and walking, outcome measures for walking should demonstrate a linkage between the underlying impairment (weakness) and walking-convergent validity. ⋯ Results suggest that the WISCI II should be a very useful outcome measure for detecting changes in walking function following chronic SCI.
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Neurorehabil Neural Repair · Feb 2011
Posterolateral surface electrical stimulation of abdominal expiratory muscles to enhance cough in spinal cord injury.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) patients have respiratory complications because of abdominal muscle weakness and paralysis, which impair the ability to cough. ⋯ The increases in P(ga) and PEF with electrical stimulation using the novel posterolateral electrode placement are 2 to 3 times greater than improvements reported in other studies. This suggests that posterolateral electrical stimulation of abdominal muscles is a simple noninvasive way to enhance cough in individuals with SCI.