Effects of Mental Training on Voluntary Muscle Strength in Aging

描述（由申请人提供）：越来越多的证据表明，用强烈的肌肉收缩的心理意象进行训练可以增强下行命令（来自大脑）并加强肌肉输出。这一发现在医疗康复方面有很大的应用，因为尽管对许多认知健康的患者和患有肌肉无力的虚弱老年人来说，进行传统的力量训练是不安全或困难的，但他们可以用他们的头脑来加强他们的肌肉。实施这种类型的心理训练的两个主要障碍是研究人员无法直接监测受试者的心理过程，以及许多受试者的困难，特别是那些认知能力降低的受试者（例如，老年人），在没有任何关于相关大脑活动的反馈的情况下，在精神上“强烈地”收缩肌肉。最近已经表明，头皮EEG频率的功率与肌肉收缩的强度线性相关。此外，EEG振荡功率与预期（精神）肌肉收缩的强度成比例地增加。这些发现表明，脑电功率信号反映了大脑活动控制肌肉力量，这提供了使用脑电频率功率作为监测质量的心理训练和最大化的结果结果的客观参数的可能性。我们的总体假设是，在肌肉形态和协调性不变的特定受试者中，力量的大小与驱动肌肉的大脑信号的大小直接相关;皮质信号反馈的心理训练可以更有效地增强大脑信号并增加肌肉力量。目标1将确定通过监测EEG频率的功率进行的心理训练是否上级在老年人中没有此类反馈的心理训练。目标2将研究潜在的神经机制，介导心理训练引起的力量改善。假设有EEG反馈的心理训练组将表现出更大的皮层信号变化，并获得比没有这样的EEG反馈的组更多的力量;神经适应的量将与力量的增加显著相关。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Evidence is accumulating that training with mental imagery of strong muscle contractions enhances descending command (from the brain) and strengthens muscle output. This finding has substantial application in medical rehabilitation because although it is unsafe or difficult for many cognitively healthy patients and frail older adults who suffer muscle weakness to undergo conventional strength training, it is possible for them to use their mind to strengthen their muscles. Two major obstacles to the implementation of mental training of this type are the inability of investigators to monitor the mental processes of the subjects directly and the difficulty of many subjects, especially those with reduced cognitive ability (e.g., old people), to mentally contract a muscle "strongly" without any feedback about relevant brain activity. It has recently been shown that power of scalp EEG frequencies is linearly correlated to the intensity of muscle contraction. Furthermore, the EEG oscillation power increases proportionally with intensity of intended (mental) muscle contractions. These findings indicate that the EEG power signal reflects brain activities controlling muscle force; this offers the possibility of using the EEG frequency power as an objective parameter for monitoring quality of the mental training and maximizing the outcome result. Our overall hypothesis is that in given subjects with muscle morphology and coordination unchanged, the amount of strength is directly related to the magnitude of brain signal driving the muscle; mental training with the cortical signal feedback can more effectively enhance the brain signal and increase muscle strength. Aim 1 will determine whether mental training by monitoring the power of EEG frequency is superior in allowing gain in muscle strength to mental training without such feedback in older adults. Aim 2 will examine potential neural mechanisms that mediate mental training-induced strength improvements. It is hypothesized that the mental training group with the EEG feedback will exhibit greater cortical signal change and gain more strength than the group with no such EEG feedback; the amount of neural adaptation will correlate significantly with strength increases.