Komaris Dimitrios-Sokratis, Tsaopoulos Dimitrios, Risvas Konstantinos, Nikolopoulos Spiros, Baltzopoulos Vasilios, Maganaris Constantinos, Kompatsiaris Ioannis
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Information Technologies Institute, Thessaloniki, Greece.
School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Faculty of Science, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2025 Jul 16;19:1601147. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1601147. eCollection 2025.
This study analyzed muscle synergies in subacute stroke patients' gait, comparing paretic and non-paretic limbs with healthy individuals, and explored the structure and temporal activation of synergistic muscle activation patterns.
Muscle synergies were computed from EMG data of 12 muscles in 138 able-bodied adults and 50 stroke survivors using non-negative matrix factorization, analyzing 350 control strides, 319 paretic strides, and 337 non-paretic strides. Temporal activation coefficients of the muscle synergies between groups of strides were also compared using cross-correlation analysis.
The extracted muscle synergies were consistent in composition across all groups of control and stroke subjects, with four synergies identified in gait cycles on average. The comparison of the synergies' temporal activation returned indexes (r) ranging from 0.60 to 0.74, with differences existing in the duration and timing of the activations of the hip flexors and knee extensors, dorsal flexors, and plantar flexors.
Our findings suggest a certain degree of preserved motor function in stroke patients' gait, even in the presence of recent hemiparesis, but with evident alterations in the synergies' temporal activation. Stroke rehabilitation by targeting abnormal muscle synergy activations may help shape personalized treatment plans.
本研究分析了亚急性中风患者步态中的肌肉协同作用，将患侧和非患侧肢体与健康个体进行比较，并探讨了协同肌肉激活模式的结构和时间激活情况。
使用非负矩阵分解从138名健康成年人和50名中风幸存者的12块肌肉的肌电图数据中计算肌肉协同作用，分析350个对照步幅、319个患侧步幅和337个非患侧步幅。还使用互相关分析比较了不同步幅组之间肌肉协同作用的时间激活系数。
在所有对照组和中风患者组中，提取的肌肉协同作用在组成上是一致的，平均在步态周期中识别出四种协同作用。协同作用的时间激活返回指数（r）在0.60至0.74之间，髋部屈肌、膝部伸肌、背屈肌和跖屈肌的激活持续时间和时间存在差异。
我们的研究结果表明，即使存在近期偏瘫，中风患者步态中的运动功能仍有一定程度的保留，但协同作用的时间激活存在明显改变。针对异常肌肉协同激活进行中风康复可能有助于制定个性化治疗方案。
