Mental tasks induce common modulations of oscillations in cortex and spinal cord

 Ask your competent? doctor if this creates the proper waves and oscillations for these interventions. Your doctor better know of all of these and the answer IF COMPETENT AT ALL!

• alpha oscillations (3 posts to December 2019)
  
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• sleep oscillations (1 post to January 2025)
• theta oscillations (1 post to September 2024)
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• gamma waves (4 posts to November 2017)
• theta waves (1 post to December 2017)

Mental tasks induce common modulations of oscillations in cortex and spinal cord

• Patrick Ofner,
• Dario Farina &
• Carsten Mehring 

Abstract

Background

Spike trains from spinal motor neurons contain low-frequency components that modulate muscle force, and higher-frequency components (above 10 Hz) that do not. The functional role of these higher-frequency components in motor control is still debated. We investigated whether mental tasks that modulate the power of cortical oscillations produce corresponding modulations in spinal motor neuron activity above 10 Hz without affecting force output. Such coupling would indicate that some higher-frequency components are not merely arising as a byproduct of force generation nor indirectly contributing to motor control, but simply reflect cortical oscillations propagating to spinal motor neurons. If voluntary power modulations of these higher-frequency oscillations do not affect force output, they could potentially serve as control signals for neural interface applications such as movement augmentation or motor neuroprostheses.

Methods

We recruited 15 human participants and recorded high-density electromyography signals (HD-EMG) from the tibialis anterior muscle, as well as electroencephalography (EEG) signals. The cumulative spike train (CST) was computed from the activity of spinal motor neurons decoded from HD-EMG signals. The participants performed sustained dorsiflexion concurrent with foot motor imagery, hand motor imagery, mental arithmetic, or no specific mental task. We analysed the bandpower correlation between EEG and CST signals as well as evaluated the task discriminability of CST bandpower signals with a linear classifier.

Results

At the intra-muscular coherence peak, we found statistically significant power correlations between CST and EEG in two separate analyses: first, when correlating across individual trials regardless of the mental task, and second, when correlating across the four mental tasks (Kendall’s coefficient , respectively; mean ± std. dev.). To evaluate the potential of the CST as a control signal, we classified the mental tasks based on CST bandpower and obtained classification accuracies slightly but significantly above chance level (; chance level = 25%).

Conclusion

These results show that mental tasks can simultaneously modulate the power of cortical and spinal oscillations. This supports the notion that cortical oscillations not contributing to ongoing force control can propagate to the spinal level. We further demonstrate that mental tasks can be classified from CST bandpower, but classification performance is limited by the low signal-to-noise ratio.

New technology of “mental training” will help to rehabilitate apoplectics

Well it is possible but this testing was on healthy subjects and with NO leadership or strategy in stroke nothing will occur.

New technology of “mental training” will help to rehabilitate apoplectics

Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University scientists together with their colleagues performed testing of a new BCI-based vibrotactile neurofeedback interface technology. It allows conducting the so-called "mental trainings" that help people to recover after a stroke. This invention accelerated BCI mastering due to the signal applied to the patient's hand following the command given by the brain. The BCI based on the vibrotactile neurofeedback interface technology will make the post-stroke patients' locomotor functions recover a lot faster and more efficiently, while the use thereof will become more comfortable and practical. This study was published in the "IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering" Journal.

Among all death causes the apoplectic stroke is ranked second with about 6 million people dying therefrom annually. It is quite often that the apoplectic stroke involves such bad after-effects as motor impairment, speech disorder and other consequences. Only 8% of stroke patients(I've been using 10% full recovery) can get back to usual life, while 70-80% become disabled. Around 30% of them require constant care. Rehabilitation is of vast importance in the course of recovery of physical, psychological and professional activities and independence of daily living.

BCI-based approaches are claimed to be the most prospective way of rehabilitation. The program perceives the activity of certain brain regions of even a profoundly paralyzed patient and then deciphers such signals as an intention of a particular action. Because the patient's body cannot yet move in a normal manner, either a BCI exoskeleton or a robot does this work instead. Another option includes causing contraction of the relevant muscle groups, as with multiple repetitions the nerve tracts lost after the stroke may recover. These rehabilitation methodologies ensure active participation of the patient in the training process and high intension there of during different recovery periods and at the same time decrease the medical personnel workload.

Susanna Gordleeva says: "Though BCI development is on a rather high level, it features a number of downsides. Thus, the interface command is formed for as long as several minutes, but the patient will have to learn doing it for quite a while, too. Besides, to prepare and control the process, an operator is always required. Moreover, control over BCI requires a person's effort to the extent comparable with lifting of a very heavy weight, but the result is not that much of a success. Our invention does not feature these downsides, and, hopefully, it will allow easing the post-stroke rehabilitation and enable to overcome the BCI velocity and accuracy constraints".

The research officers of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad), Lobachevsky University (Nizhniy Novgorod) and Innopolis University (Innopolis) showed a new BCI-based vibrotactile neurofeedback interface technology, which activates the feedback using multi-channel skin surface stimulation. To achieve this, a special construction connected to different parts of the patient's body was used, so that the test subject received a vibration signal. The experiment consisted of four stages with ten healthy volunteers participating.

The first day was dedicated to training instructions. The second stage included BCI-based training supported by a visual stimulation, whereby the volunteers had to execute one of the three commands of a computer screen: close either a left or a right fist, or "rest" (focus on own breath). The third stage was a control one, where, despite of other BCI signals, the "rest" command had to be executed. The final stage was carried out using a BCI based on tactile stimulation, so that the test subject received a vibration signal if the command was classified right. To evaluate the procedure efficiency, the results of training with and without vibrotactile BCI were compared; besides, measurements were taken in the course of training as well.

Susanna Gordleeva added: "The findings of this study showed, that using the BCI-based training device with tactile stimulation increases the activity of the brain region, which operates the locomotion system, and due to such stimulation the nerve tract recovery shows more efficiency. As we go forward, we plan to examine the influence of the new technology training on the sense functions of aged people and post-stroke patients".

Provided by Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University

 

Combining mental training and physical training with goal oriented protocols in stroke rehabilitation: a feasibility case study

Once again your doctor has absolutely nothing to do to get you recovered. You are completely on your own to figure out your 100% recovery. 
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00125/abstract

Xin Zhang¹, Ahmed M. Elnady¹, Bubble K. Randhawa¹, Lara Boyd² and Carlo Menon^1*

• ¹School of Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada
• ²University of British Columbia, Canada

Stroke is one of the leading causes of permanent disability in adults. The literature suggests that rehabilitation is key to early motor recovery. However, conventional therapy is labor and cost intensive. Robotic and functional electrical stimulation (FES) devices can provide a high dose of repetitions and as such may provide an alternative, or an adjunct, to conventional rehabilitation therapy. Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) could augment neuroplasticity by introducing mental training. However, mental training alone is not enough; but combining mental with physical training could boost outcomes. In the current case study, a portable rehabilitative platform and goal-oriented supporting training protocols were introduced and tested with a chronic stroke participant. A novel training method was introduced with the proposed rehabilitative platform. A 37-year old individual with chronic stroke participated in six-weeks of training (18 sessions in total, 3 sessions a week, and one hour per session). In this case study, we show that an individual with chronic stroke can tolerate a six-week training bout with our system and protocol. The participant was actively engaged throughout the training. Changes in the Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT) suggest that the training positively affected arm motor function (12% improvement in WMFT score).

Keywords: mental training, physical training, BCI, exoskeleton, FES, stroke rehablitation

Received: 07 Dec 2017; Accepted: 16 Mar 2018.

Edited by:

Stephane Perrey, Université de Montpellier, France

Reviewed by:

Silmar Teixeira, Federal University of Piauí, Brazil
Kyuhwa Lee, Campus Biotech, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Switzerland  

Copyright: © 2018 Zhang, Elnady, Randhawa, Boyd and Menon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Dr. Carlo Menon, Simon Fraser University, School of Engineering Science, Burnaby, V5A 1S6, British Columbia, Canada, cmenon@sfu.ca

Mental Training Enhances Cognitive Function and BDNF More Than Either Physical or Combined Training in Elderly Women With MCI: A Small-Scale Study

Your doctor should be able to IMMEDIATELY take this and create a cognitive protocol for all stroke survivors.  You need BDNF for better stroke recovery. What the hell is your doctor doing to improve your BDNF levels? ANYTHING AT ALL?
115 posts on BDNF for your doctors edification.

Low Circulating Acute Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Levels Are Associated With Poor Long-Term Functional Outcome After Ischemic Stroke

Mental Training Enhances Cognitive Function and BDNF More Than Either Physical or Combined Training in Elderly Women With MCI: A Small-Scale Study 

Arsalan Damirchi, PhD, Fatemeh Hosseini, MSc, Parvin Babaei, PhD

First Published September 25, 2017 Research Article

Download PDF	Article information

Abstract

Introduction:

The effects of mental, physical, and combination of these two trainings were investigated on cognitive performance, serum level of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and irisin in women diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Material and Methods:

Forty-four participants were randomized into 4 groups: physical training (PH; 8 weeks’ aerobic training, n = 11), mental training (ME; special computer gaming, n = 11), combined (PH + ME; n = 13), and control group (CO; n = 9).

Results:

Analysis of variance with Tukey post hoc test revealed a significant increase in working memory (P = .012) and BDNF (P = .24) in the ME compared with the CO group. Also the ME group in comparison with the PH group demonstrated better working memory (P = .014) and processing speed (P = .024).

Conclusion:

Positive effect of mental training on the cognitive parameters, parallel with BDNF elevation, suggests that mental training is a more useful, safe, and persistent strategy to attenuate the progression of MCI probably via BDNF elevation, but the effect size is relatively small elevation.