Aims and Scope

The Open Neuroimaging Journal is an Open Access journal, which publishes research articles, reviews/mini-reviews, and letters in all important areas of brain function, structure and organization including neuroimaging, neuroradiology, analysis methods, functional MRI acquisition and physics, brain mapping, macroscopic level of brain organization, computational modeling and analysis, structure-function and brain-behavior relationships, anatomy and physiology, psychiatric diseases and disorders of the nervous system, use of imaging to the understanding of brain pathology and brain abnormalities, cognition and aging, social neuroscience, sensorimotor processing, communication and learning.


The Open Neuroimaging Journal, a peer-reviewed journal, is an important and reliable source of current information on important recent developments in the field. Emphasis is placed on publishing quality papers, making them freely available to researchers worldwide.


Editor's Choice

Peak Activation Shifts in the Sensorimotor Cortex of Chronic Stroke Patients Following Robot-assisted Rehabilitation Therapy

Loukas G. Astrakas, Shasha Li, Mark P. Ottensmeyer, Christian Pusatere, Michael A. Moskowitz, A. Aria Tzika

Background:

Ischemic stroke is the most common cause of complex chronic disability and the third leading cause of death worldwide. In recovering stroke patients, peak activation within the ipsilesional primary motor cortex (M1) during the performance of a simple motor task has been shown to exhibit an anterior shift in many studies and a posterior shift in other studies.

Objective:

We investigated this discrepancy in chronic stroke patients who completed a robot-assisted rehabilitation therapy program.

Methods:

Eight chronic stroke patients with an intact M1 and 13 Healthy Control (HC) volunteers underwent 300 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while performing a grip task at different force levels with a robotic device. The patients were trained with the same robotic device over a 10-week intervention period and their progress was evaluated serially with the Fugl-Meyer and Modified Ashworth scales. Repeated measure analyses were used to assess group differences in locations of peak activity in the sensorimotor cortex (SM) and the relationship of such changes with scores on the Fugl-Meyer Upper Extremity (FM UE) scale.

Results:

Patients moving their stroke-affected hand had proportionally more peak activations in the primary motor area and fewer peak activations in the somatosensory cortex than the healthy controls (P=0.009). They also showed an anterior shift of peak activity on average of 5.3-mm (P<0.001). The shift correlated negatively with FM UE scores (P=0.002).

Conclusion:

A stroke rehabilitation grip task with a robotic device was confirmed to be feasible during fMRI scanning and thus amenable to be used to assess plastic changes in neurological motor activity. Location of peak activity in the SM is a promising clinical neuroimaging index for the evaluation and monitoring of chronic stroke patients.


July 07, 2021
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