Study of the brain function characteristics in children with cerebral palsy during walking using functional
Tengyu Zhang1, Gongcheng Xu1,2, Yajie Chang1,3
1National Research Center for Rehabilitation Technical Aids, Beijing Key Laboratory of Rehabilitation Technical Aids for Old-Age Disability, Key Laboratory of Neuro-functional Information and Rehabilitation Engineering of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Beijing, China.
Insights
Children with cerebral palsy (CP) exhibit altered brain activity and connectivity during walking. Their brains show different activation patterns and struggle to maintain stable network connections, impacting rehabilitation strategies.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Pediatrics
- Rehabilitation Medicine
Background:
- Abnormal gait in children with cerebral palsy (CP) stems from brain damage or developmental issues.
- Understanding brain function and regulatory mechanisms is crucial for effective CP rehabilitation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate brain function characteristics in children with CP during walking.
- To analyze cortical activation, functional connectivity, information flow, and dynamic state transitions.
Main Methods:
- Analyzed 17 children with CP and 13 healthy children (HC) in resting and walking states.
- Utilized electroencephalography (EEG) or similar neuroimaging techniques to assess brain activity and connectivity.
Main Results:
- Healthy children showed significant motor cortex (MC) activation during walking.
- Children with CP exhibited significant prefrontal cortex (PFC) and MC activation.
- CP group displayed reduced resting-state functional connectivity, with altered global efficiency, modularity, clustering coefficients, and local efficiency.
- CP brain networks struggled to maintain stable global connectivity during walking, favoring local connectivity.
- Children with CP allocated more resources to the non-dominant MC, unlike HC who favored the dominant MC.
Conclusions:
- The study highlights distinct brain activation and network connectivity patterns in children with CP during gait.
- These findings provide a theoretical foundation for developing targeted rehabilitation treatments for CP.
- Understanding these neurophysiological characteristics is key to improving motor function and gait in children with CP.
Significance:
Abnormal gait of children with cerebral palsy (CP) is caused by brain damage or developmental defects, exploring the brain's functional characteristics and regulatory mechanisms is essential for rehabilitation.
Aim:
We aim to study the brain function characteristics in children with CP during walking.
Approach:
The cortical activation, functional connectivity, information flow, and dynamic state transitions of 17 children with CP and 13 healthy children (HC) were analyzed in the resting and walking states.
Results:
The motor cortex (MC) of HC is significantly activated in the walking state, whereas both the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and MC of children with CP are significantly activated. The resting brain functional connectivity of children with CP decreased and showed higher global efficiency and modularity and lower clustering coefficients and local efficiency. During walking, the brain network of children with CP was difficult to maintain a stable global high-connectivity state so the local high-connectivity state became the main connectivity state. For children with CP, more brain resources were allocated to the non-dominant MC during walking, whereas more brain resources were allocated to the dominant MC in HC.
Conclusions:
These indicators reflect the characteristics of brain activation, network connectivity, and information regulation in children with CP, which provide the theoretical basis for targeted rehabilitation treatment.
