Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 8, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-27101-0
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Canadian Government-Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program (ELAP) [509/2016]
- Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES/Brazil)
- Canadian Partnership for Stroke Recovery and Heart and Stroke Canada
Ask authors/readers for more resources
A coordinated pattern of multi-muscle activation is essential to produce efficient reaching trajectories. Disruption of these coordinated activation patterns, termed synergies, is evident following stroke and results in reaching deficits; however, preclinical investigation of this phenomenon has been largely ignored. Furthermore, traditional outcome measures of post-stroke performance seldom distinguish between impairment restitution and compensatory movement strategies. We sought to address this by using kinematic analysis to characterize reaching movements and kinematic synergies of rats performing the Montoya staircase task, before and after ischemic stroke. Synergy was defined as the simultaneous movement of the wrist and other proximal forelimb joints (i.e. shoulder, elbow) during reaching. Following stroke, rats exhibited less individuation between joints, moving the affected limb more as a unit. Moreover, abnormal flexor synergy characterized by concurrent elbow flexion, shoulder adduction, and external rotation was evident. These abnormalities ultimately led to inefficient and unstable reaching trajectories, and decreased reaching performance (pellets retrieved). The observed reaching abnormalities in this preclinical stroke model are similar to those classically observed in humans. This highlights the potential of kinematic analysis to better align preclinical and clinical outcome measures, which is essential for developing future rehabilitation strategies following stroke.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available