Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2018 Apr 26;13(4):e0196177. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0196177. eCollection 2018.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is known to increase asymmetry and variability of bilateral movements. However, the mechanisms of such abnormalities are not fully understood. Here, we aimed to investigate whether kinematic abnormalities are related to cortical participation during bilateral, cyclical ankle movements, which required i) maintenance of a specific frequency and ii) bilateral coordination of the lower limbs in an anti-phasic manner. We analyzed electroencephalographic and electromyographic signals from nine men with PD and nine aged-matched healthy men while they sat and cyclically dorsi- and plantarflexed their feet. This movement was performed at a similar cadence to normal walking under two conditions: i) self-paced and ii) externally paced by a metronome. Participants with PD exhibited reduced range of motion and more variable bilateral coordination. However, participants with and without PD did not differ in the magnitude of corticomuscular coherence between the midline cortical areas and tibialis anterior and medial gastrocnemius muscles. This finding suggests that either the kinematic abnormalities were related to processes outside linear corticomuscular communication or PD-related changes in neural correlates maintained corticomuscular communication but not motor performance.
帕金森病（PD）已知会增加双侧运动的不对称性和可变性。然而，这些异常的机制尚未完全了解。在这里，我们旨在研究运动学异常是否与双侧周期性踝关节运动期间皮质的参与有关，这些运动需要 i）维持特定的频率和 ii）下肢以反相方式进行双侧协调。我们分析了 9 名 PD 男性和 9 名年龄匹配的健康男性在坐着并进行背屈和跖屈足部的周期性运动时的脑电图和肌电图信号。这项运动以类似于正常步行的节奏在两种情况下进行：i）自我调节和 ii）由节拍器外部调节。PD 患者的运动范围减小，双侧协调性更具可变性。然而，PD 患者和非 PD 患者之间中线皮质区域与胫骨前肌和内侧腓肠肌之间的皮质肌相干性的幅度没有差异。这一发现表明，运动学异常要么与线性皮质肌通讯之外的过程有关，要么 PD 相关的神经相关性变化维持了皮质肌通讯，但没有维持运动表现。
