Analysis of movement-related sympathetic responses reflecting volition of individuals with severe motor impairment

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The purpose of this study was to find out if the human volition to move is accompanied with sympathetic activation toward developing assistive devices relied on sympathetic responses. Temporal relationship between EMG onset and skin sympathetic nerve activity(SSNA) was investigated in voluntary reaction tasks. SSNA onset was not time-locked to the cue, but was instead positively correlated with EMG reaction time. The interval between the EMG and SSNA bursts in voluntary handgrip trials was significantly shorter than the latency of SSNA bursts in electrical stimulation trials, and slightly longer than the postganglionic conduction time. Our findings suggest that central motor systems are involved in the sympathetic sudomotor response to voluntary motor execution.