Spasticity or reversible muscle hypertonia?

Commentary on "spasticity or reversible muscle hypertonia?".

Optical inhibition of motor nerve and muscle activity in vivo.

INTRODUCTION There is no therapeutic approach that provides precise and rapidly reversible inhibition of motor nerve and muscle activity for treatment of spastic hypertonia. METHODS We used optogenetics to demonstrate precise and rapidly reversible light-mediated inhibition of motor nerve and muscle activity in vivo in transgenic Thy1::eNpHR2.0 mice. RESULTS We found optical inhibition of m...

Spasticity and Its Contribution to Hypertonia in Cerebral Palsy

Spasticity is considered an important neural contributor to muscle hypertonia in children with cerebral palsy (CP). It is most often treated with antispasticity medication, such as Botulinum Toxin-A. However, treatment response is highly variable. Part of this variability may be due to the inability of clinical tests to differentiate between the neural (e.g., spasticity) and nonneural (e.g., so...

Pathophysiology of Spasticity: Implications for Neurorehabilitation

Spasticity is the velocity-dependent increase in muscle tone due to the exaggeration of stretch reflex. It is only one of the several components of the upper motor neuron syndrome (UMNS). The central lesion causing the UMNS disrupts the balance of supraspinal inhibitory and excitatory inputs directed to the spinal cord, leading to a state of disinhibition of the stretch reflex. However, the del...

Spasticity and muscle contracture following stroke.

It has become increasingly recognized that the major functional deficits following brain damage are largely due to "negative' features such as weakness and loss of dexterity rather than spasticity. A variety of studies suggest that spasticity is a distinct problem and separate from the loss of dexterity, but that it may be implicated in the formation of muscle contracture and even in the recove...