Deans' stroke musings: Plasticity in the sensorimotor cortex induced by Music-supported therapy in stroke patients: a TMS study

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.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Plasticity in the sensorimotor cortex induced by Music-supported therapy in stroke patients: a TMS study

So not only should we be listening to music, we should be having music therapy also.
http://www.frontiersin.org/human_neuroscience/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00494/full?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Psychiatry-w37-2013

Jennifer Grau-Sánchez¹, Julià L. Amengual¹, Nuria Rojo¹, Misericordia Veciana de las Heras², Jordi Montero², Francisco Rubio², Eckart Altenmüller³, Thomas F. Münte⁴ and Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells^1,5,6*

¹Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute - IDIBELL, Barcelona, Spain
²Neurology Section, Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute - IDIBELL, Barcelona, Spain
³Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine, Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media, Hannover, Germany
⁴Department of Neurology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany
⁵Department of Basic Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
⁶Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

Playing a musical instrument demands the engagement of different neural systems. Recent studies about the musician's brain and musical training highlight that this activity requires the close interaction between motor and somatosensory systems. Moreover, neuroplastic changes have been reported in motor-related areas after short and long-term musical training. Because of its capacity to promote neuroplastic changes, music has been used in the context of stroke neurorehabilitation. The majority of patients suffering from a stroke have motor impairments, preventing them to live independently. Thus, there is an increasing demand for effective restorative interventions for neurological deficits. Music-supported Therapy (MST) has been recently developed to restore motor deficits. We report data of a selected sample of stroke patients who have been enrolled in a MST program (1 month intense music learning). Prior to and after the therapy, patients were evaluated with different behavioral motor tests. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) was applied to evaluate changes in the sensorimotor representations underlying the motor gains observed. Several parameters of excitability of the motor cortex were assessed as well as the cortical somatotopic representation of a muscle in the affected hand. Our results revealed that participants obtained significant motor improvements in the paretic hand and those changes were accompanied by changes in the excitability of the motor cortex. Thus, MST leads to neuroplastic changes in the motor cortex of stroke patients which may explain its efficacy.