Deans' stroke musings: Abstract WP150: Functional Connectivity Changes and Behavioral Gains Following Brain-Computer Interface Therapy for Stroke Rehabilitation

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.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Abstract WP150: Functional Connectivity Changes and Behavioral Gains Following Brain-Computer Interface Therapy for Stroke Rehabilitation

Too many big words were used for my understanding, hell I'm a stroke addled survivor, I need 5th grade language so I can talk intelligently to my doctor. I don't need PhDs talking between themselves.
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/49/Suppl_1/AWP150

, Veena Nair, , Hemali Advani, Tyler Jacobson, , Matthew Walczak, Justin Williams, Vivek Prabhakaran

Stroke. 2018;49:AWP150

Abstract

While most survivors have some spontaneous recovery after stroke, they reach a functional plateau and are left with persistent motor impairments. An emerging therapy, EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), shows promise in promoting neural reorganization and facilitating additional motor recovery after stroke, however, the relationships between the neuroplastic changes and behavioral outcomes following this therapy are not fully understood. We examined changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the motor network and behavioral measures, including Stroke Impact Scale (SIS) and Action Research Arm Test (ARAT), over the course this therapy and investigated functional connectivity - behavior correlations. Twenty-six stroke patients with mild to severe upper extremity impairment completed EEG-based BCI therapy. Resting fMRI and anatomical scans were acquired on a GE 3T MRI Scanner before therapy, mid-, post- and one-month post-therapy, along with a neuropsychology battery. MRI scans of right hemisphere stroke patients were flipped to treat all subjects as left lesion hemisphere patients. We performed whole network, inter-hemispheric? and intra-hemispheric? seed region based connectivity analyses to study changes in rsFC over time and identify correlations between changes in rsFC and behavior over time. After therapy, a significant increase in network connectivity (p =0.000003) and intra-hemispheric connectivity (p = 0.047) from pre- to one-month post-therapy was observed. Additionally, inter-hemispheric connectivity increased and trended towards significance (p = 0.058). A significant positive correlation was observed between changes in network-level rsFC and SIS ADL (p = 0.005). Changes in intra-hemispheric rsFC correlated with ARAT for the affected arm (p = 0.001) and SIS Mobility (p = 0.003). The results suggest that EEG-based BCI therapy facilitates changes in rsFC in the motor network in stroke survivors, and these changes in connectivity are correlated with improvements in behavioral outcomes. This analysis provides a foundation for furthering our understanding of the potential of EEG-based BCI as a therapeutic modality for stroke rehabilitation to promote neurophysiological changes and motor recovery.

Author Disclosures: A. Sinha: None. V. Nair: None. A. Remsik: None. H. Advani: None. T. Jacobson: None. M. Mcmillan: None. M. Walczak: None. J. Williams: None. V. Prabhakaran: None.