Remarkable hand grip steadiness in individuals with complete spinal cord injury.

Remarkable hand grip steadiness in individuals with complete spinal cord injury. Exp Brain Res. 2019 Oct 08;: Authors: Nakanishi T, Kobayashi H, Obata H, Nakagawa K, Nakazawa K Abstract Although no damage occurs in the brains of individuals with spinal cord injury, structural and functional reorganization occurs in the sensorimotor cortex because of the deafferentation of afferent signal input from below the injury level. This brain reorganization that is specific to individuals with spinal cord injury is speculated to contribute to the improvement of the motor function of the remaining upper limbs. However, no study has investigated in detail the motor function above the injury level. To clarify this, we designed an experiment using the handgrip force steadiness task, which is a popular technique for evaluating motor function as the index of the variability of common synaptic input to motoneurons. Fourteen complete spinal cord injury (cSCI) individuals in the chronic phase, fifteen individuals with lower limb disabilities, and twelve healthy controls participated in the study. We clarified that the force steadiness in the cSCI group was significantly higher than that in the control groups, and that sports years were significantly correlated with this steadiness. Furthermore, multiple analyses revealed that force steadiness was significantly predicted by sports years. These results suggest that brain reorganization after spinal cord ...
Source: Experimental Brain Research - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Exp Brain Res Source Type: research