IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2024;32:3902-3912. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2024.3486551. Epub 2024 Nov 5.
Motor imagery (MI) is widely employed in stroke rehabilitation due to the event-related desynchronization (ERD) phenomenon in sensorimotor cortex induced by MI is similar to actual movement. However, the traditional BCI paradigm, in which the patient imagines the movement of affected hand (AH-MI) with a weak ERD caused by the damaged brain regions, retards motor relearning process. In this work, we applied a novel MI paradigm based on the "sixth-finger" (SF-MI) in stroke patients and systematically uncovered the ERD pattern enhancement of novel MI paradigm compared to traditional MI paradigm. Twenty stroke patients were recruited for this experiment. Event-related spectral perturbation was adopted to supply details about ERD. Brain activation region, intensity and functional connectivity were compared between SF-MI and AH-MI to reveal the ERD enhancement performance of novel MI paradigm. A "wider range, stronger intensity, greater connection" ERD activation pattern was induced in stroke patients by novel SF-MI paradigm compared to traditional AH-MI paradigm. The bilateral sensorimotor and prefrontal modulation was found in SF-MI, which was different in AH-MI only weak sensorimotor modulation was exhibited. The ERD enhancement is mainly concentrated in mu rhythm. More synchronized and intimate neural activity between different brain regions was found during SF-MI tasks compared to AH-MI tasks. Classification results (>80% in SF-MI vs. REST) also indicated the feasibility of applying novel MI paradigm to clinical stroke rehabilitation. This work provides a novel MI paradigm and demonstrates its neural activation-enhancing performance, helping to develop more effective MI-based BCI system for stroke rehabilitation.
运动想象（MI）在中风康复中得到广泛应用，因为 MI 引起的感觉运动皮层中的事件相关去同步（ERD）现象与实际运动相似。然而，传统的脑机接口（BCI）范式中，患者通过受损大脑区域引起的微弱 ERD 想象患手运动（AH-MI），这会延迟运动再学习过程。在这项工作中，我们应用了一种新的基于“第六指”（SF-MI）的 MI 范式，并系统地揭示了与传统 MI 范式相比，新型 MI 范式的 ERD 模式增强。我们招募了 20 名中风患者参与这项实验。采用事件相关谱扰动来提供 ERD 的详细信息。比较 SF-MI 和 AH-MI 之间的大脑激活区域、强度和功能连接，以揭示新型 MI 范式的 ERD 增强性能。与传统 AH-MI 范式相比，新型 SF-MI 范式在中风患者中诱导出“范围更宽、强度更强、连接更大”的 ERD 激活模式。在 SF-MI 中发现了双侧感觉运动和前额叶调节，而在 AH-MI 中仅表现出微弱的感觉运动调节。ERD 增强主要集中在 mu 节律。与 AH-MI 任务相比，SF-MI 任务中不同脑区之间的神经活动更加同步和紧密。分类结果（SF-MI 中>80%，REST 中<50%）也表明了应用新型 MI 范式进行临床中风康复的可行性。这项工作提供了一种新的 MI 范式，并证明了其神经激活增强性能，有助于开发更有效的基于 MI 的中风康复 BCI 系统。
