Young Scott J, van Doornik Johan, Sanger Terence D
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
J Child Neurol. 2011 Jan;26(1):37-43. doi: 10.1177/0883073810371828. Epub 2010 Jun 4.
Inappropriate muscle activation and co-contraction are important features in childhood dystonia, and clinical interventions are often targeted to reduce the excess muscle activation. Previous research has shown that visual biofeedback of muscle activity can help people to reduce excess muscle activation in a variety of motor disorders. To investigate the effectiveness of similar techniques for dystonia, we had participants perform a tracking task with and without visual feedback of co-contraction. Children with dystonia had greater levels of co-contraction than children without dystonia. Most importantly, individuals were able to reduce their co-contraction significantly when visual biofeedback was provided. These results indicate that children with dystonia are able to control co-contraction, at least to a certain extent, provided attention can be directed to the excess muscle activation. These results also suggest that methods of biofeedback focusing on inappropriate muscle activations might provide a clinical benefit for treatment of children with dystonia.
不适当的肌肉激活和共同收缩是儿童肌张力障碍的重要特征，临床干预通常旨在减少过度的肌肉激活。先前的研究表明，肌肉活动的视觉生物反馈可以帮助人们在各种运动障碍中减少过度的肌肉激活。为了研究类似技术对肌张力障碍的有效性，我们让参与者在有和没有共同收缩视觉反馈的情况下执行跟踪任务。患有肌张力障碍的儿童比没有肌张力障碍的儿童有更高水平的共同收缩。最重要的是，当提供视觉生物反馈时，个体能够显著减少他们的共同收缩。这些结果表明，患有肌张力障碍的儿童能够控制共同收缩，至少在一定程度上如此，前提是注意力能够指向过度的肌肉激活。这些结果还表明，专注于不适当肌肉激活的生物反馈方法可能对治疗患有肌张力障碍的儿童具有临床益处。
