Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.
Department of Rehabilitation, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin 300052, People's Republic of China.
J Neural Eng. 2024 Jan 25;21(1). doi: 10.1088/1741-2552/ad1dc4.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that changes the activity of the cerebral cortex. Contralesional continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) has been proposed and verified beneficial to stroke motor recovery. However, the underlying mechanism is still unclear.20 healthy right-handed subjects were recruited in this study, receiving real-cTBS over their left primary motor cortex or sham-cTBS. We designed the finger tapping task (FTT) before and after stimulation and recorded the accuracy and reaction time (RT) of the task. The electroencephalogram and surface electromyogram signals were recorded during the left finger pinching task (FPT) before and after stimulation. We calculated cortico-muscular coherence (CMC) in the contralateral hemisphere and cortico-cortical coherence (CCC) in the bilateral hemisphere. The two-way repeated measures analysis of variance was used to analyze the effect of cTBS.In the FTT, there was a significant main effect of 'time' on RT ((1, 38) = 24.739,< 0.001). In the FPT, the results showed that there was a significant interaction effect on the CMC peak and area in the beta band (peak:(1, 38) = 8.562,= 0.006; area:(1, 38) = 5.273,= 0.027), on the CCC peak in the alpha band ((1, 38) = 4.815,= 0.034) and area in the beta band ((1, 38) = 4.822,= 0.034). The post hoc tests showed that the CMC peak (= 20,= 0.002), the CMC area (= 13,= 0.003) and the CCC peak (= -2.696,= 0.014) increased significantly after real-cTBS. However, there was no significant decrease or increase after sham-cTBS.Our study found that cTBS can improve CMC of contralateral hemisphere and CCC of bilateral hemisphere, indicating that cTBS can strengthen cortico-muscular and cortico-cortical coupling.
经颅磁刺激是一种非侵入性的脑刺激技术，可以改变大脑皮层的活动。对侧连续 theta 爆发刺激（cTBS）已被提出并被验证对中风运动功能恢复有益。然而，其潜在机制仍不清楚。本研究纳入 20 名健康右利手受试者，接受左侧初级运动皮层的真实 cTBS 或假刺激 cTBS。我们在刺激前后设计了手指敲击任务（FTT），并记录了任务的准确性和反应时间（RT）。在刺激前后的左手捏指任务（FPT）中记录脑电图和表面肌电图信号。我们计算了对侧半球的皮质肌束相干性（CMC）和双侧半球的皮质皮质相干性（CCC）。采用双因素重复测量方差分析来分析 cTBS 的影响。在 FTT 中，“时间”对 RT 有显著的主效应（(1, 38)=24.739, <0.001）。在 FPT 中，结果显示在 beta 频段的 CMC 峰值和面积（峰值：(1, 38)=8.562, =0.006；面积：(1, 38)=5.273, =0.027）、alpha 频段的 CCC 峰值（(1, 38)=4.815, =0.034）和 beta 频段的 CCC 面积（(1, 38)=4.822, =0.034）存在显著的交互效应。事后检验显示，真实 cTBS 后 CMC 峰值（=20, =0.002）、CMC 面积（=13, =0.003）和 CCC 峰值（=-2.696, =0.014）显著增加，而假刺激 cTBS 后则无明显变化或增加。本研究发现，cTBS 可以提高对侧半球的 CMC 和双侧半球的 CCC，表明 cTBS 可以增强皮质肌束和皮质皮质的耦合。
