BACKGROUND the central tenet of the neurofacilitatory approach to stroke therapy is that muscle tone needs to be normal before normal movement can occur. A reliable clinical measure of the full spectrum of muscle tone is needed to test: (i) the purported relationship between muscle tone, other motor impairments and disability, and (ii) the effectiveness of stroke therapy to restore movement. ...

Effects of indomethacin and prostaglandins (PGs: PG E1, PG E2 and PG F2 alpha) on electrical and mechanical properties of the dog iris sphincter and dilator muscles were studied using isometric tension recording and microelectrode methods. When field stimulations (50 V, 0.4 msec, 10 stimuli at 10 Hz) were applied every 1 min, the muscle tone was gradually elevated in both muscle tissues. Applic...

Within muscular equivalents of cat lower esophageal sphincter (LES), the circular muscle develops greater spontaneous tone, whereas the sling muscle is more responsive to cholinergic stimulation. Smooth muscle contraction involves a combination of calcium release from stores and of calcium entry via several pathways. We hypothesized that there are differences in the sources of Ca(2+) used for c...

Stimulation of the midbrain retrorubral (RRN), ventral paralemniscal tegmental field (vFTP), reticular tegmental (TRN), and pedunculopontine tegmental (PPN) nuclei was found to produce bilateral suppression of muscle tone in the unanesthetized, decerebrate animal. The RRN is the most rostral area shown to produce such suppression. This muscle tone suppression was frequency- and intensity-depend...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the influence of gestational age (GA) and birth weight (BW) in the clinical assessment of the muscle tone of healthy term and preterm newborns. METHOD Cross sectional study. The muscle tone of healthy 42 preterm and 47 term newborns was quantified and measured with a goniometer (an instrument for measuring angles) respectively between 7th-14th day of life and 24-48 hours...

Muscle tone abnormalities are associated with many CNS pathologies and severely limit recovery of motor control. Muscle tone depends on the level of excitability of spinal motoneurons and interneurons. The present study investigated the following hypotheses: (1) direct current flowing from spinal cord to sciatic nerve [spinal-to-sciatic direct current stimulation (DCS)] would inhibit spinal mot...

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the immediate effect of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation on muscle tone and muscle stiffness in stroke patients. [ Subjects and Methods] The subjects consisted of 15 patients with chronic stroke (stroke group) and 15 healthy persons (healthy group). We measured the effects of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation intervention o...

We studied the degree of arteriolar smooth muscle constriction in the spinotrapezius muscle microcirculation of spontaneously hypertensive rats and their normotensive controls, Wistar-Kyoto rats. The constriction was expressed in the form of a nondimensional tone as the difference between steady state and dilated diameter (after papaverine treatment) divided by the dilated diameter. Both animal...