Brain oscillatory activity correlates with the relief of post-stroke spasticity following focal vibration

Some evidence has demonstrated that focal vibration (FV) contributes to the relief of post-stroke spasticity (PSS). Although the changes of cortical activity correlating with the relief of PSS induced by FV have been explored using transcranial magnetic stimulation, brain oscillatory activity during the above-mentioned process has not been fully understood.

The main purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between the changes in brain oscillatory activity and the relief of PSS following FV.

A clinical experiment was carried out, in which FV (87 Hz, 0.28 mm) was applied over the antagonist muscle's belly of the spastic muscle of ten chronic spastic stroke patients. An electroencephalogram was recorded following before-FV and three sessions of FV. Muscle properties to assess the relief of PSS were tested before-FV and immediately after three sessions of FV.

EEG analysis has shown that FV can lead to the significant decrease in the relative power at C3 and C4 in the beta1 (13, 18 Hz), as well as C3 and C4 in the beta3 band (21, 30 Hz), indicating the activation of primary sensorimotor cortex (S1-M1). Muscle properties analysis has shown that, in the state of flexion of spastic muscle, muscle compliance and muscle displacement of the spastic muscle significantly increased right after FV, illustrating the relief of the spasticity. Moreover, the increase of muscle compliance is positively correlated with the reduction of difference index of the activation of bilateral S1-M1.

This finding indicated that the relief of PSS can be associated with the activation of bilateral S1-M1 where the activation of the ipsilesional S1-M1 was higher than that of the contralesional one. This study showed the brain oscillatory activity in the bilateral S1-M1 correlating with the relief of PSS following FV, which could contribute to establishing cortex oscillatory activity as a biomarker of the relief of PSS and providing a potential mechanism explanation of the relief of PSS.