Zheng Yang, Peng Yu, Xu Guanghua, Li Long, Wang Jue
State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.
Front Neurol. 2018 Jan 10;8:728. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2017.00728. eCollection 2017.
Motor deficits after stroke are supposed to arise from the reduced neural drive from the brain to muscles. This study aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of reflecting the motor function improvement after stroke with the measurement of corticomuscular coherence (CMC) in an individual subject.
A stroke patient was recruited to participate in an experiment before and after the function recovery of his paretic upper limb, respectively. An elbow flexion task with a constant muscle contraction level was involved in the experiment. Electromyography and electroencephalography signals were recorded simultaneously to estimate the CMC. The non-parameter statistical analysis was used to test the significance of CMC differences between the first and second times of experiments.
The strongest corticomuscular coupling emerged at the motor cortex contralateral to the contracting muscles for both the affected and unaffected limbs. The strength of the corticomuscular coupling between activities from the paretic limb muscles and the contralateral motor cortex for the second time of experiment increased significantly compared with that for the first time. However, the CMC of the unaffected limb had no significant changes between two times of experiments.
The results demonstrated that the increased corticomuscular coupling strength resulted from the motor function restoration of the paretic limb. The measure of CMC can reflect the recovery of motor function after stroke by quantifying interactions between activities from the motor cortex and controlled muscles.
中风后的运动功能障碍被认为是由于大脑对肌肉的神经驱动减少所致。本研究旨在证明在个体受试者中通过测量皮质肌肉连贯性（CMC）来反映中风后运动功能改善的可行性。
招募一名中风患者，分别在其患侧上肢功能恢复前后参与实验。实验中涉及在肌肉收缩水平恒定的情况下进行肘部屈曲任务。同时记录肌电图和脑电图信号以估计CMC。采用非参数统计分析来检验两次实验之间CMC差异的显著性。
对于患侧和未患侧肢体，最强的皮质肌肉耦合出现在与收缩肌肉对侧的运动皮层。与第一次实验相比，第二次实验中患侧肢体肌肉活动与对侧运动皮层之间的皮质肌肉耦合强度显著增加。然而，未患侧肢体的CMC在两次实验之间没有显著变化。
结果表明，皮质肌肉耦合强度的增加是由于患侧肢体运动功能的恢复。CMC的测量可以通过量化运动皮层活动与受控肌肉之间的相互作用来反映中风后运动功能的恢复。
