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Emory University School of Medicine Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Division of Physical Therapy Translational Research in Rehabilitation Medicine Seminar Series Guest Speaker: Andrew Tan, Postdoctoral Fellow Candidate Department of Biomedical Engineering Northwestern University Host: Randy D Trumbower, PT, PhD Wednesday, July 22, 2015 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Emory SOM Building, Room 130 “Cortical regulation of aberrant lower limb synergies post stroke” Open to all faculty, staff, and students. Sponsored by: INSPIRE Lab, Emory University, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine Growing evidence demonstrates unique synergistic signatures in the lower limb (LL) post-stroke, with a specific across-plane and across-joint representations. Observations of such neural constraints include coupled cross planar kinetic outflow and altered muscle synergy structure. Recent findings from our lab illustrated that additional activation of the lesioned hemisphere upregulates the expression of these aber- rant muscle synergies in the LL. While the inhibitory role of the ipsilateral hemisphere in the upper limb has been widely reported, examination of the role of the contralesional hemisphere in modulating these synergies in the LL following stroke is lacking. Accordingly, we test the hypothesis that stimulation of lesioned and non-lesioned motor cortices will have differential effects on the motor evoked potential (MEP) patterns of the paretic LL. We propose a novel TMS paradigm to identify patterns of MEPs across multiple LL muscles during a task where synergistic actions have been reported. Our observa- tions provide new insight into the association between cortical reorganization of the unaffected hemi- sphere and abnormal muscle activation patterns post stroke.
