Recovery of Motor Imagery Ability in Stroke Patients

Autor: Sjoerd de Vries, Marga Tepper, Bert Otten, Theo Mulder
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2011
Předmět:
Zdroj: Rehabilitation Research and Practice, Vol 2011 (2011)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2090-2867
2090-2875
DOI: 10.1155/2011/283840
Popis: Objective. To investigate whether motor imagery ability recovers in stroke patients and to see what the relationship is between different types of imagery and motor functioning after stroke. Methods. 12 unilateral stroke patients were measured at 3 and 6 weeks poststroke on 3 mental imagery tasks. Arm-hand function was evaluated using the Utrecht Arm-Hand task and the Brunnström Fugl-Meyer Scale. Age-matched healthy individuals (N=10) were included as controls. Results. Implicit motor imagery ability and visual motor imagery ability improved significantly at 6 weeks compared to 3 weeks poststroke. Conclusion. Our study shows that motor imagery can recover in the first weeks after stroke. This indicates that a group of patients who might not be initially selected for mental practice can, still later in the rehabilitation process, participate in mental practice programs. Moreover, our study shows that mental imagery modalities can be differently affected in individual patients and over time.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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