Reactivating the Dormant Motor Cortex After Spinal Cord Injury With EEG Neurofeedback: A Case Study With a Chronic, Complete C4 Patient.

Reactivating the Dormant Motor Cortex After Spinal Cord Injury With EEG Neurofeedback: A Case Study With a Chronic, Complete C4 Patient. Clin EEG Neurosci. 2018 Aug 07;:1550059418792153 Authors: López-Larraz E, Escolano C, Montesano L, Minguez J Abstract Chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) patients present poor motor cortex activation during movement attempts. The reactivation of this brain region can be beneficial for them, for instance, allowing them to use brain-machine interfaces for motor rehabilitation or restoration. These brain-machine interfacess generally use electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the cortical activation during the attempts of movement, quantifying it as the event-related desynchronization (ERD) of the alpha/mu rhythm. Based on previous evidence showing that higher tonic EEG alpha power is associated with higher ERD, we hypothesized that artificially increasing the alpha power over the motor cortex of these patients could enhance their ERD (ie, motor cortical activation) during movement attempts. We used EEG neurofeedback (NF) to enhance the tonic EEG alpha power, providing real-time visual feedback of the alpha oscillations measured over the motor cortex. This approach was evaluated in a C4, ASIA A, SCI patient (9 months after the injury) who did not present ERD during the movement attempts of his paralyzed hands. The patient performed 4 NF sessions (in 4 consecutive days) and screenings of his EEG activity...
Source: Clinical EEG and Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Clin EEG Neurosci Source Type: research