Alterations in Muscle Networks in the Upper Extremity of Chronic Stroke Survivors
Alterations in Muscle Networks in the Upper Extremity of Chronic Stroke Survivors
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DOI：
10.1109/tnsre.2021.3075907
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发表时间：
2021-01-01
影响因子：
4.9
通讯作者：
Zhang, Yingchun
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Houston, Michael;Li, Xiaoyan;Zhang, Yingchun
肌肉网络描述了肌肉之间的功能连接，通过分解肌肉间的连贯性(IMC)来确定某些肌肉被共同的神经输入所共同调制的频率。人们已经致力于确定健康受试者肌肉网络的特征，但与中风相关的肌肉网络变化仍未被探索。在轻度、中度和重度损伤的中风幸存者的等长力产生过程中，评估了8块关键上肢肌肉的肌肉网络，并与健康对照组进行比较，以确定中风特异性肌肉连接性的变化。利用非负矩阵分解对相干矩阵进行分解。然后对阈值的方差进行评估以确定肌肉网络的数量。结果显示，与年龄匹配的健康对照组(健康对照组中有四个肌肉网络)相比，中风幸存者的肌肉网络数量随着中风后运动障碍的严重程度的增加而减少(轻度中风组有三个，中、重度中风组有两个)。与健康对照组相比，中风患者阿尔法频段协同三角肌的IMC显著降低(p<；0.05)。据我们所知，这项研究是第一次使用肌肉网络分析来评估与中风相关的功能性肌肉间连接的改变。这些发现揭示了中风幸存者与健康对照组相比肌肉网络的变化模式，这是与中风相关的大脑功能丧失的结果。肌肉网络的这些变化反映了病理生理学的基础。这些发现有助于更好地了解中风的运动障碍和运动控制，并可能通过在频域识别多个肌肉之间受损的神经肌肉协调来促进中风的康复努力。
Muscle networks describe the functional connectivity between muscles quantified through the decomposition of intermuscular coherence (IMC) to identify shared frequencies at which certain muscles are comodulated by common neural input. Efforts have been devoted to characterizing muscle networks in healthy subjects but stroke-linked alterations to muscle networks remain unexplored. Muscle networks were assessed for eight key upper extremity muscles during isometric force generation in stroke survivors with mild, moderate, and severe impairment and compared against healthy controls to identify stroke-specificalterations inmuscle connectivity. Coherence matrices were decomposed using non-negative matrix factorization. The variance accounted for thresholding was then assessed to identify the number ofmuscle networks. Results showed that the number ofmuscle networks decreased in stroke survivors compared to age-matched healthy controls (four networks in the healthy control group) as the severity of post-stroke motor impairment increased (three in the mild- and two in the moderate- and severe-strokegroups). Statistically significant reductions of IMC in the synergistic deltoid muscles in the alpha-band in stroke patients versus healthy controls (p < 0.05) were identified. This study represents the first effort, to the best of our knowledge, to assess stroke-linked alterations in functional intermuscularconnectivityusingmuscle network analysis. The findings revealed a pattern of alterations to muscle networks in stroke survivors compared to healthy controls, as a result of the loss of brain function associated with the stroke. These alterations in muscle networks reflected underlyingpathophysiology. These findings can help better understand themotor impairment andmotor control in stroke and may advance rehabilitation efforts for stroke by identifying the impaired neuromuscular coordination among multiple muscles in the frequency domain.