Cortical processing during robot and functional electrical stimulation.

Introduction: Like alpha rhythm, the somatosensory mu rhythm is suppressed in the presence of somatosensory inputs by implying cortical excitation. Sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) can be classified into two oscillatory frequency components: mu rhythm (8-13 Hz) and beta rhythm (14-25 Hz). The suppressed/enhanced SMR is a neural correlate of cortical activation related to efferent and afferent movement information. Therefore, it would be necessary to understand cortical information processing in diverse movement situations for clinical applications.

Methods: In this work, the EEG of 10 healthy volunteers was recorded while fingers were moved passively under different kinetic and kinematic conditions for proprioceptive stimulation. For the kinetics aspect, afferent brain activity (no simultaneous volition) was compared under two conditions of finger extension: (1) generated by an orthosis and (2) generated by the orthosis simultaneously combined and assisted with functional electrical stimulation (FES) applied at the forearm muscles related to finger extension. For the kinematic aspect, the finger extension was divided into two phases: (1) dynamic extension and (2) static extension (holding the extended position).

Results: In the kinematic aspect, both mu and beta rhythms were more suppressed during a dynamic than a static condition. However, only the mu rhythm showed a significant difference between kinetic conditions (with and without FES) affected by attention to proprioception after transitioning from dynamic to static state, but the beta rhythm was not.

Discussion: Our results indicate that mu rhythm was influenced considerably by muscle kinetics during finger movement produced by external devices, which has relevant implications for the design of neuromodulation and neurorehabilitation interventions.