AIM The aim of this study was to report a single-centre experience of flunarizine in childhood migraine with focus on safety and efficacy. METHOD We conducted a retrospective observational audit of 72 individuals (40 male, 32 female; mean age 13y; age range 1y 6mo-17y) at a tertiary paediatric neurology unit between 1998 and 2009. Children were included if they had a diagnosis of migraine and...

Anosognosia for hemiplegia (AHP) is characterised by poor insight or underestimation of hemiplegia after brain injury. Recent explanations of AHP have used an established 'forward model', which proposes that normal motor awareness involves comparing the predicted and actual sensory consequences of movements. These accounts propose that AHP patients may be able to form representations of their i...

Normalization of upper limb movement remains a difficult problem for a significant subpopulation of hemiplegic stroke patients. Clinical observations prompted investigation of a novel approach using simultaneous identical bilateral movements performed independently. We briefly report 12 controlled single-case experiments using multiple-baseline designs across three separate grasp/reach activiti...

An experiment was carried out in the key laboratory for Technique Diagnosis and Function Assessment of Winter Sports of China to investigate the differences in gait characteristics between healthy children and children with spastic hemiplegic cerebral palsy. With permission of their parents, 200 healthy children aged 3 to 6 years in the kindergarten of Northeastern University were enrolled in t...

Familial hemiplegic migraine type 1, a monogenic migraine variant with aura, is linked to gain-of-function mutations in the CACNA1A gene encoding Ca(V)2.1 channels. The S218L mutation causes severe channel dysfunction, and paroxysmal migraine attacks can be accompanied by seizures, coma, and hemiplegia; patients expressing the R192Q mutation exhibit hemiplegia only. Familial hemiplegic migraine...

OBJECTIVE Evaluate side-to-side discrepancies in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy (HCP), and investigate associations of these discrepancies with patients' age at initiation of physical therapy, motor and cognitive function, and degree of activities and social participation. METHOD We obtained eight side-to-side measurements from 24 HCP children with mean age 49.3±5.2 months. RESULTS...

The authors evaluate the effect of rehabilitation on the temporal and masseter muscles of the elevator mandible. Parallel studies were con­ ducted on the status of occlusion and dental arch and cephalometric analysis of the physiognomy was performed to evaluate the recovery of the mimical muscles in 31 hemiplegic patients. A significant difference in the EMG activity of the masticatory muscles ...

Hemiplegic cerebral palsy is characterized by unilateral upper limb impairment and patients often compensate by performing most tasks with their unaffected arm. Constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) directly combats this learned non-use by casting the unaffected arm and forcing the patient to repetitively practice skills with the hemiplegic limb. Subjects with hemiplegic cerebral palsy wer...