Deans' stroke musings: Neuromuscular electrical stimulation for stroke rehabilitation: Is spinal plasticity a possible mechanism associated with diminished spasticity?

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.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Neuromuscular electrical stimulation for stroke rehabilitation: Is spinal plasticity a possible mechanism associated with diminished spasticity?

DEMAND your doctor figure out how to stop spasticity. Tell them that Dr. William M. Landau is not worth listening to.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987713004027

^a Universidade Estadual Paulista, School of Science and Technology, Physical Therapy Department, Biomechanics and Motor Control Laboratory, Rua Roberto Simonsen, 305, Presidente Prudente, SP, Brazil
^b School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Universidade de São Paulo, EACH, Avenida Arlindo Bettio, 1000, SP, Brazil
^c Neuroscience Program and Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Universidade de São Paulo, EPUSP, PTC, BrazilThe country name has been inserted in the affiliation. Please check, and correct if necessary.

Abstract

Although the specific pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the development of spasticity are not fully understood, a large amount of evidence suggests that abnormalities in spinal pathways regulating the stretch reflex may contribute to the hypertonia and hyperreflexia that characterize spasticity. It is quite interesting that neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) has been reported as an efficient treatment for reducing spasticity after stroke while other reports have shown that it promotes neuroplasticity in healthy subjects. The hypothesis addressed in this paper is that plastic effects within some spinal cord pathways may be a possible mechanism associated with the NMES-induced improvements in spasticity. If the hypothesis is proven corrected, the association between plasticity within specific spinal pathways and NMES-induced improvements in spasticity may be used to guide the choice of stimulation parameters to be used in NMES-based stroke rehabilitation protocols.