Journal Article

Low-frequency cortical activity is a neuromodulatory target that tracks recovery after stroke

Hishinuma, April K., Chang, Edward F., Davidson, Gray, Gulati, Tanuj, Won, Seok-Joon, Ganguly, Karunesh, Ramanathan, Dhakshin S., Swanson, Raymond A., Guo, Ling, Knight, Robert T.

2018

Overview

Recent work has highlighted the importance of transient low-frequency oscillatory (LFO; <4 Hz) activity in the healthy primary motor cortex during skilled upper-limb tasks. These brief bouts of oscillatory activity may establish the timing or sequencing of motor actions. Here, we show that LFOs track motor recovery post-stroke and can be a physiological target for neuromodulation. In rodents, we found that reach-related LFOs, as measured in both the local field potential and the related spiking activity, were diminished after stroke and that spontaneous recovery was closely correlated with their restoration in the perilesional cortex. Sensorimotor LFOs were also diminished in a human subject with chronic disability after stroke in contrast to two non-stroke subjects who demonstrated robust LFOs. Therapeutic delivery of electrical stimulation time-locked to the expected onset of LFOs was found to significantly improve skilled reaching in stroke animals. Together, our results suggest that restoration or modulation of cortical oscillatory dynamics is important for the recovery of upper-limb function and that they may serve as a novel target for clinical neuromodulation. Recovery of skilled motor function in rodents after stroke correlates with the restoration of low-frequency quasi-oscillatory activity in the motor cortex, and neuromodulatory electrical stimulation targeting this activity can further accelerate recovery.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group US,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 631/378/1687 / 692/617 / Animals / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biomedicine / Brain / Cancer Research / Care and treatment / Cortex (motor) / Electric stimulation / Electrical stimuli / Electrophysiological recording / Firing pattern / Forelimb - physiopathology / Health aspects / Health services / Humans / Infectious Diseases / Male / Metabolic Diseases / Molecular Medicine / Motor cortex / Motor Cortex - physiopathology / Motor skill / Motor task performance / Motors / Nervous system / Neuromodulation / Neurophysiology / Neurosciences / Perceptual-motor processes / Physiological aspects / Rats, Long-Evans / Recovery / Recovery of Function / Restoration / Rodents / Sensorimotor Cortex - physiopathology / Somatosensory cortex / Spontaneous recovery / Stroke / Stroke - physiopathology / Task Performance and Analysis / Tracking