Search results for "Motor"
showing 10 items of 3137 documents
The temperament of preterm infant in preschool age
2010
Abstract Background The study deals with the characteristics of temperament of preterm infants during their preschool age in order to not only investigate likely "difficult or problematic profiles", guided by impairments driven by their preterm birth, but also to provide guidelines for the activation of interventions of prevention, functional to improve the quality of preterm infant's life. Methods The study involved a group of 105 children where 50 preterm children at the average age of 5 years and 2 months, enrolled in preschools of Palermo. The research planned the child reference teachers to be administered a specific questionnaire, the QUIT, made up of 60 items investigating six specif…
Motor imagery training: Kinesthetic imagery strategy and inferior parietal fMRI activation
2017
Motor imagery (MI) is the mental simulation of action frequently used by professionals in different fields. However, with respect to performance, well‐controlled functional imaging studies on MI training are sparse. We investigated changes in fMRI representation going along with performance changes of a finger sequence (error and velocity) after MI training in 48 healthy young volunteers. Before training, we tested the vividness of kinesthetic and visual imagery. During tests, participants were instructed to move or to imagine moving the fingers of the right hand in a specific order. During MI training, participants repeatedly imagined the sequence for 15 min. Imaging analysis was performed…
Perceived barriers to and facilitators of being physically active during adjuvant cancer treatment
2016
The aim was to describe cancer patients' perceived barriers and facilitators of physical activity during adjuvant cancer treatment.Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with patients with breast cancer (n=9) and colorectal cancer (n=1) and prostate cancer (n=8) undergoing adjuvant cancer treatment. To capture perceived barriers and facilitators before starting treatment, individual interviews with women with breast cancer (n=5) were also conducted. 23 patients in total, were interviewed, and the transcribed interviews were analysed with qualitative content analysis.Three categories emerged: "Physical and emotional barriers"-addresses experiences of side-effects, co-morbid co…
"…The times they aren't a-changin'…" rTMS does not affect basic mechanisms of temporal discrimination: a pilot study with ERPs.
2014
In time processing, the role of different cortical areas is still under investigation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) represent valuable indices of neural timing mechanisms in the millisecond-to-second domain. We used an interference approach by repetitive TMS (rTMS) on ERPs and behavioral performance to investigate the role of different cortical areas in processing basic temporal information. Ten healthy volunteers were requested to decide whether time intervals between two tones (S1-S2, probe interval) were shorter (800 ms), equal to, or longer (1200 ms) than a previously listened 1000-ms interval (target interval) and press different buttons accordingly. This task was performed at the b…
TRANSCRANIAL DIRECT CURRENT STIMULATION ENHANCES SUCKING OF A LIQUID BOLUS IN HEALTHY HUMANS
2014
Abstract Background Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive technique used for modulating cortical excitability in vivo in humans. Here we evaluated the effect of tDCS on behavioral and electrophysiological aspects of physiological sucking and swallowing. Methods Twelve healthy subjects underwent three tDCS sessions (anodal, cathodal and sham stimulation) on separate days in a double-blind randomized order. The active electrode was placed over the right swallowing motor cortex. Repeated sucking and swallowing acts were performed at baseline and at 15 and 60 min after each tDCS session and the mean liquid bolus volume ingested at each time point was measured. We also…
Magnetic stimulation study during observation of motor tasks.
2000
The aim of the study was to assess if the observation of single or more complex muscle movements activates the premotor cortex in man. We stimulated by transcranial magnetic stimulation the right and left motor cortex recording from the abductor pollicis brevis of eight normal subjects, during observation of different movements performed by the examiner: (1) single movements: thumb abduction, arm elevation; (2) motor sequences: finger opposing movements performed in an ordinate sequence: 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-2ellipsis, and in a non-consecutive non-repetitive order: 1-3, 1-5, 1-4, 1-2, 1-5, 1-2ellipsis We found an increased excitability of the right cortex during observation of isolated mus…
Modulation of spinal cord excitability by subthreshold repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the primary motor cortex in humans.
2001
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) allows the modulation of intra-cortical excitability and may therefore affect the descending control of spinal excitability. We applied rTMS at subthreshold intensity and 1 Hz frequency for 10 min to the left primary motor cortex representation of the flexor carpi radialis muscle (FCR) in 10 subjects and assessed the H and M responses to median nerve stimulation before and after the rTMS. Following rTMS, H wave thresholds significantly reduced by ∼20%. Maximal H but not M wave amplitude significantly increased over the baseline, so that H/M amplitude ratio was increased by 41%. Sham stimulation did not induce any noticeable change in M or …
Lateralized effects of self-induced sadness and happiness on corticospinal excitability.
1997
We studied the changes in excitability of the corticospinal projection evoked by self-induced sad and happy thoughts. Corticospinal excitability was probed using focal, single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied to the optimal scalp position for evoking motor potentials in the contralateral first dorsal interosseus muscle. Fourteen right-handed subjects were studied while counting mentally, thinking sad thoughts, or thinking happy thoughts. In each of these three conditions TMS was applied in each subject randomly, 20 times to the right and 20 times to the left hemisphere. Sad thoughts resulted in a significant facilitation of the motor potentials evoked by left-hemispheri…
High-Frequency Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Motor Cortex of Patients Affected by Migraine With Aura: A Way to Restore Normal Cortical Excitab…
2009
We showed reduced motor intracortical inhibition (ICI) and paradoxical increase of intracortical facilitation (ICF) to 1 Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in patients affected by migraine with aura (MA). In conditions of enhanced excitability due to a reduced inhibition, high-frequency rTMS was found to potentiate intracortical inhibition. Here we explored the conditioning effects of high-frequency priming stimulation of motor cortex with the aim of normalizing excitability reverting paradoxical facilitation by 1 Hz rTMS in MA. Nine patients with MA and nine healthy controls underwent a paired-pulse TMS paradigm to evaluate motor intracortical excitability (ICI and ICF…
Transcranial magnetic stimulation reveals cortical hyperexcitability in episodic cluster headache
2014
Abstract Evidence shows involvement of the cerebral cortex in the pathophysiology of cluster headache (CH). Here we investigated cortical excitability in episodic CH patients by using transcranial magnetic stimulation. In 25 patients with episodic CH and 13 healthy subjects we evaluated the motor cortical response to single-pulse (ie, motor threshold, input-output curves, cortical silent period) and paired-pulse (ie, intracortical facilitation, short intracortical inhibition) transcranial magnetic stimulation in both hemispheres. Thirteen patients were evaluated outside bout and the remaining 12 patients inside bout. Our results showed increased slope of the input-output curves after stimul…