Many, but not all patients with congenital hemiparesis (i.e., hemiparesis due to a pre-, peri- or neonatally acquired brain lesion) control their paretic hands via ipsilateral cortico-spinal projections from the contra-lesional hemisphere (CON-H). Patients who still control their paretic hands via preserved crossed cortico-spinal projections from the damaged hemisphere nevertheless show increas...

Functional MRI was performed in two acute stroke patients and six control subjects performing unilateral and bilateral repetitive gripping tasks. Patients were tested at three time points during recovery. Initially, bilateral movement enhanced activation in the primary motor cortex (M1) of the affected hemisphere compared with unilateral paretic hand movement. With recovery, activation of M1 in...

Hybrid Assistive Neuromuscular Dynamic Stimulation (HANDS) therapy is one of the neurorehabilitation therapeutic approaches that facilitates the use of the paretic upper extremity (UE) in daily life by combining closed-loop electromyography- (EMG-) controlled neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) with a wrist-hand splint. This closed-loop EMG-controlled NMES can change its stimulation int...

Movement-related slow cortical potentials (SCPs) are proposed as reliable and immediate indicators of cortical reorganization in motor learning. SCP amplitude and latency have been reported as markers for the brain's computational effort, attention and movement planning. SCPs have been used as an EEG signature of motor control and as a main feature in Brain-Machine-Interfaces (BMIs). Some repor...

A rapidly growing number of studies using inhibition of the contralesional hemisphere after stroke are reporting improvement in motor performance of the paretic hand. These studies have used different treatment onset time, duration and non-invasive methods of inhibition. Whereas these results are encouraging, several questions regarding the mechanisms of inhibition and the most effective treatm...

INTRODUCTION Somatosensory stimulation of the paretic upper limb enhances motor performance and excitability in the affected hemisphere, and increases activity in the unaffected hemisphere, in chronic stroke patients. We tested the hypothesis that somatosensory stimulation of the paretic hand would lead to changes in excitability of the unaffected hemisphere in these patients, and we investigat...

Reorganization after early brain injuries is not only determined by the maturational stage of the CNS at the time of the insult (timing), but also by the structural properties, location and extent of the lesion. This study addresses the impact of different lesion extents on the type of reorganization induced in a cohort of patients with lesions of uniform structure and location (unilateral peri...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mirror therapy on upper-extremity function and activities of daily living in chronic stroke patients. [Subjects and Methods] Fifteen subjects were each assigned to a mirror therapy group and a sham therapy group. The Fugl-Meyer Motor Function Assessment and the Box and Block Test were performed to compare paretic upper-extremity function a...

Stroke is a leading cause of adult motor disability. Despite recent progress, recovery of motor function after stroke is usually incomplete. This double blind, Sham-controlled, crossover study was designed to test the hypothesis that non-invasive stimulation of the motor cortex could improve motor function in the paretic hand of patients with chronic stroke. Hand function was measured using the...

OBJECTIVE To support the hypothesis about the potential compensatory role of ipsilateral corticofugal pathways when the contralateral pathways are impaired by brain tumours. METHODS Retrospective analysis was carried out on the results of functional MRI (fMRI) of a selected group of five paretic patients with Rolandic brain tumours who exhibited an abnormally high ipsilateral/contralateral ra...