Functional measures of motor dysfunction following disruption of peripheral moto

项目总结(见说明)： 肌腱移植手术是治疗脊髓损伤、脑瘫或其他神经疾病引起的瘫痪或瘫痪的常见程序。正常运作的肌肉的肌腱，有时甚至是直接的拮抗者，被缝合到虚弱的肌肉的肌腱中，以改善所需方向的运动功能。从这些程序中恢复运动功能可能是有限的，学习新的运动模式可能会很困难。因此，重要的是开发量化评估工具来衡量 成功地进行肌肉骨骼系统的手术操作，并跟踪周围运动装置受损的个人的康复进展。其中一种方法是使用机器人技术测量肢体硬度。这种方法可以潜在地检测肌肉骨骼组织的变化，如肌腱移位或筋膜切开术，以及神经疾病导致的脊髓和脑干本体感觉回路的变化。将进行刚度测量 对去大脑猫的后肢进行肌腱移位、筋膜切断术和肌肉神经再支配，以建立运动系统的操作与紧急力学特性之间的关系。然后这些测量将被用来评估运动系统在一段存活期后对操作的适应性。这种方法可以很容易地适用于人类受试者，并潜在地构成了一种强大的诊断工具。在肌腱移植手术结果不太令人满意的几个可能原因中，一个似乎直到 现在，肌肉的自然激活模式和来自肌肉的机械反馈之间的关系被改变了。这种错配，而不是有助于肌肉激活模式的重新训练，可能会导致本体感觉回路的抑制或重组。拟议的实验旨在检验这样一种假设，即感觉信息的时间改变可能会限制肌腱转移后功能的恢复。这些实验将利用对肢体的测量 去大脑猫的僵硬以及个体本体感觉通路的评估。

PROJECT SUMMARY (See instructions): Tendon transfer surgery is a common procedure to treat paralysis or paresis resulting from spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy or other neurological disorders. The tendon of a functioning muscle, sometimes even a direct antagonist, is sewn into the tendon of the weakened muscle to improve motor function in the desired direction. The recovery of motor function from these procedures can be limited and learning new motor patterns can be difficult. It is therefore important to develop quantitative assessment tools to measure the success of surgical manipulation of the musculoskeletal system and to track the progress of rehabilitation of individuals with injury to the peripheral motor apparatus. One such approach is the measurement of limb stiffness using robotic technology. This approach can potentially detect changes in musculoskeletal organization such as occurs with tendon transfer or fasciotomy as well as changes in proprioceptive circuits in the spinal cord and brainstem resulting from neurological disease. Stiffness measurements will be made on the hindlimbs of decerebrate cats after tendon transfer, fasciotomy and muscle reinnervation in order to establish the relationship between the manipulation of the motor system and the emergent mechanical properties. These measurements will then be used to evaluate adaptations of the motor system to the manipulation after a survival period. This approach can be readily adapted for use with human subjects, and potentially constitutes a powerful diagnostic tool. Among the several possible reasons for a less than satisfactory outcome of tendon transfer surgery, and one that appears not to have been considered until now, is that the relationships between the natural patterns of activation of the muscle and the mechanical feedback from the muscle are altered. This mismatch, rather than contributing to the retraining of muscular activation patterns, could result in suppression or reorganization of proprioceptive circuits. The proposed experiments have been designed to test the hypothesis that the altered timing of sensory information could limit recovery of function following tendon transfer. These experiments will utilize measurements of limb stiffness as well as evaluations of individual proprioceptive pathways in decerebrate cats.