Inhibition versus facilitation of contralesional motor cortices in stroke: Deriving a model to tailor brain stimulation

Stimulation of the brain is a well-accepted experimental technique for promoting recovery of the paretic upper limb after stroke. Based on the premise that ipsilesional primary motor cortex (iM1) is important for motor function (Nudo et al., 1996) and contralesional motor cortices compete with iM1 to inhibit output devoted to the paretic upper limb (Murase et al., 2004), the standard approach involves facilitating iM1 and/or inhibiting the contralesional motor cortices (Fregni et al., 2007; Di Lazzaro et al., 2013).

Source: Clinical Neurophysiology - March 21, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Vishwanath Sankarasubramanian, Andre G. Machado, Adriana B. Conforto, Kelsey A. Potter-Baker, David A. Cunningham, Nicole M. Varnerin, Xiaofeng Wang, Ken Sakaie, Ela B. Plow Source Type: research