Deans' stroke musings: The role of visual attentional load in the induction of neuroplasticity in the human motor cortex

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

The role of visual attentional load in the induction of neuroplasticity in the human motor cortex

So if you aren't paying attention during your therapy neuroplastic changes don't take as well. I do wish they had disclosed that they were working on easy neuroplasticity(penumbra) since TMS will only work when there is still some brain function left. They took the easy way out and just continued proving the same thing over and over again, penumbra plasticity works. Hey, everyone understands that, work on the hard stuff, relocation of functions to new areas.
http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239978
The human brain is capable of ongoing change during adulthood, a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. Such neuroplasticity involves both structural reorganisation as well as modification of the strength of connections between individual neurons. Within the motor cortex – the region of the brain responsible for voluntary movement – plasticity is assumed to underlie the consolidation of motor skills, as well as recovery of function following brain injury. It has been suggested that mechanisms of attention can modulate brain plasticity, but only a few studies have tested this idea empirically. The overarching aim of the present study was to investigate the role of visual attentional load in plasticity induced within the human motor cortex using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Plasticity was induced in 12 healthy participants using a TMS protocol in which stimulation of a peripheral nerve to the hand was repeatedly combined with TMS over the contralateral motor cortex. Concurrently, participants undertook an easy ('low load') or difficult ('high load') task while fixating a stream of visual stimuli, or passively observed the visual stimuli in a third condition ('no load'). The effectiveness of this manipulation was verified behaviourally. Electromyographic recordings from the stimulated muscle in the hand revealed a significant increase in motorevoked potentials from baseline to 5 minutes following the protocol under Low Load, but no significant increase under High Load. These results suggest that when attention is diverted or otherwise engaged elsewhere, neural plasticity in the motor cortex is reliably attenuated(weakened). These findings have important implications for understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the consolidation of new motor skills, in healthy functioning as well as following focal brain lesions.