Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR.
Department of Occupational Therapy, Shanghai Yangzhi Rehabilitation Hospital (Shanghai Sunshine Rehabilitation Center), Shanghai, China.
Brain Behav. 2020 Jan;10(1):e01489. doi: 10.1002/brb3.1489. Epub 2019 Dec 5.
Mirror therapy has been shown to be effective in promoting hemiplegic arm recovery in patients with stroke or unilateral cerebral palsy. This study aimed to explore the cortical mapping associated with mirror therapy in a group of healthy adults by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.
Fifteen right-handed healthy adults were recruited by means of convenience sampling. A 2 × 2 factorial design was used: movement complexity with two levels-task-based (T) and movement-based (M), and visual direction with two levels-mirror visual feedback task (MT) and covered mirror with normal visual feedback task (NoT) as the control, constituting four conditions, namely TMT, MMT, TNoT, and MNoT. The regions of interest were the sensorimotor cortex (SMC), the supplementary motor area (SMA), the superior parietal cortex (SPL), and the precuneus in both the contralateral and ipsilateral hemispheres.
Our findings showed that in the ipsilateral hemisphere, MT induced a higher activation in the SMA and SPL than NoT. With regard to the activation of the ipsilateral SMC, only one channel was found showing superior effects of MT compared with NoT. In addition, MT can strengthen the functional connectivity between the SMC and SMA. In the contralateral hemisphere, both movement complexity and visual direction showed significant main effects in the SMC, while only movement complexity showed a significant main effect in the SMA and SPL. The precuneus of both sides was deactivated and showed no significant difference among the four conditions.
Our experiment implies that the modest activation of ipsilateral SMC during MT is likely to be associated with the enhanced activity of ipsilateral SMA and that the precuneus may not be an essential component of the MT-related neural network.
镜像疗法已被证明可有效促进中风或单侧脑瘫患者偏瘫手臂的恢复。本研究旨在通过使用功能近红外光谱技术，探讨镜像疗法在一组健康成年人中的皮质映射。
通过便利抽样，招募了 15 名右利手健康成年人。采用 2×2 因子设计：运动复杂性有两个水平-基于任务（T）和基于运动（M），视觉方向有两个水平-镜像视觉反馈任务（MT）和正常视觉反馈任务下的遮盖镜（NoT）作为对照，构成四个条件，即 TMT、MMT、TNoT 和 MNoT。感兴趣区域为对侧和同侧半球的感觉运动皮层（SMC）、辅助运动区（SMA）、顶叶上回（SPL）和楔前叶。
我们的研究结果表明，在同侧半球中，MT 引起的 SMA 和 SPL 激活高于 NoT。关于同侧 SMC 的激活，只有一个通道显示 MT 比 NoT 具有更高的效果。此外，MT 可以增强 SMC 和 SMA 之间的功能连接。在对侧半球中，运动复杂性和视觉方向都对 SMC 有显著的主效应，而只有运动复杂性对 SMA 和 SPL 有显著的主效应。双侧的楔前叶被去激活，在四个条件之间没有显著差异。
我们的实验表明，MT 期间同侧 SMC 的适度激活可能与同侧 SMA 的增强活动有关，而楔前叶可能不是 MT 相关神经网络的必要组成部分。
