Descending neural drives to ankle muscles during gait and their relationships with clinical functions in patients after stroke

Gait is a fundamental component of human daily life. Patients who have suffered central nervous system (CNS) lesions that impair descending motor pathways have difficulty walking independently (Dietz et al., 1995; Jørgensen et al., 1995; Rossignol, 2000). Thus, walking in humans depends on the integrated action of hierarchical levels of supraspinal and spinal neural control (Nielsen, 2003; Yang and Gorassini, 2006), within which the contributions of the primary motor cortex and corticospinal tract are particularly important (Barthélemy et al., 2011; Petersen et al., 2012).

Source: Clinical Neurophysiology - November 3, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Ryosuke Kitatani, Koji Ohata, Yumi Aga, Yuki Mashima, Yu Hashiguchi, Masanori Wakida, Ayaka Maeda, Shigehito Yamada Source Type: research