Sensory relearning

Humans receive sensory information from the past, requiring the brain to overcome delays to perform daily motor skills such as standing upright. Because delays vary throughout the body and change over a lifetime, it would be advantageous to generalize learned control policies of balancing with delays across contexts. However, not all forms of learning generalize. Here, we use a robotic simulator to impose delays into human balance. When delays are imposed in one direction of standing, participants are initially unstable but relearn to balance by reducing the variability of their motor actions and transfer balance improvements to untrained directions...

Adenylyl cyclase 1 (AC1) is a selective subtype of ACs, which is selectively expressed in neurons. The activation of AC1 is activity-dependent, and AC1 plays an important role in cortical excitation that contributes to chronic pain and related emotional disorders. Previous studies have reported that human-used NB001 (hNB001, a selective AC1 inhibitor) produced analgesic effects in different animal models of chronic pain. However, the potential effects of hNB001 on learning and memory have been less investigated...

OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this study was to describe the epidemiology of surgically repaired digital nerve injuries in a Swedish population. Secondary objectives were to describe the demographics of the patient population, injury characteristics, post-operative care and rehabilitation. METHODS: From 2012 to 2018, 1004 patients with a surgically repaired digital nerve injury resident in the Stockholm region were identified in the Swedish national quality registry for hand surgery and all medical records were thoroughly reviewed...

A habitual gaze is critical to efficiently identify and exploit valuable objects. However, it is unclear what salience components drive the habitual gaze choice. Here, we trained subjects to assign positive, neutral, and negative values to objects and found that motivational salience guided habitual gaze choices over 30 days of memory retention. The habitual preference for negatively valued objects emerged during memory retention. This habitual choice was not explained by a general model with salience components driven by physical features of objects and the rank of learned values...

BACKGROUND: Combining robotic therapy (RT) with task-oriented therapy is an emerging strategy to facilitate motor relearning in stroke rehabilitation. This study protocol will compare novel rehabilitation regimens that use bilateral RT as a priming technique to augment two task-oriented therapies: mirror therapy (MT) and bilateral arm training (BAT) with a control intervention: RT combined with impairment-oriented training (IOT). METHODS: This single-blind, randomized, comparative efficacy study will involve 96 participants with chronic stroke...

The recent increase in the number of patients with post-viral olfactory dysfunction (PVOD) following the outbreak of COVID-19 has raised the general interest in and concern about olfactory dysfunction. At present, no clear method of treatment for PVOD has been established. Currently the most well-known method to improve the symptoms of olfactory dysfunction is "olfactory training" using essential oils. The essential oils used in olfactory training typically include rose, lemon, clove, and eucalyptus, which were selected based on the odor prism hypothesis proposed by Hans Henning in 1916...

Neurorehabilitation in patients suffering from motor deficits relies on relearning or re-adapting motor skills. Yet our understanding of motor learning is based mostly on results from one or two-dimensional experimental paradigms with highly confined movements. Since everyday movements are conducted in three-dimensional space, it is important to further our understanding about the effect that gravitational forces or perceptual anisotropy might or might not have on motor learning along all different dimensions relative to the body...

Recently, it was shown that sensory relearning of the upper limb (SENSUPP) is a promising intervention to improve sensorimotor function after stroke. There is limited knowledge, however, of how participants perceive the training. Here, we explored how persons with sensory impairments in the upper limb experienced the SENSUPP protocol (combined sensory- and motor training and home exercises for 5 weeks) and its effect. Fifteen persons (mean age 59 years; 10 men; >6 months post-stroke) were individually interviewed, and data were analyzed with qualitative content analysis...

BACKGROUND: Sensorimotor impairments of the upper limb (UL) is common after stroke, but there is a lack of evidence-based interventions to improve functioning of UL. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate (i) the efficacy of sensory relearning and task-specific training compared to task-specific training only, and (ii) the feasibility of the training in chronic stroke. DESIGN: A pilot randomized controlled trial. SETTING: University Hospital Outpatient clinic...

Cortical reorganization occurs immediately after peripheral nerve injury, and early sensorimotor training is suggested during nerve regeneration. The effect of mirror therapy and classical sensory relearning on cortical activation immediately after peripheral nerve repair of the forearm is unknown. Six participants were randomly assigned to the mirror-therapy group or the sensory-relearning group. Sensorimotor training was conducted in a mirror box for 12 weeks. The mirror-therapy group used mirror reflection of the unaffected hand in order to train the affected hand, and the sensory-relearning group trained without mirror reflection...

BACKGROUND: Music-based interventions (MBI), using music as a therapeutic medium, has been utilized as a promising strategy for motor relearning and shaping. However, currently, MBI with active performance training is restricted to being extensively applied for patients with various levels of defects in fine motor skills and cognitive functions. Therefore, the integration of vibrotactile stimulation with MBI has been adopted as a motor training strategy intended to enhance motor learning through use of vibration stimuli...

Crossmodal mappings associate features (such as spatial location) between audition and vision, thereby aiding sensory binding and perceptual accuracy. Previously, it has been unclear whether patients with artificial vision will develop crossmodal mappings despite the low spatial and temporal resolution of their visual perception (particularly in light of the remodeling of the retina and visual cortex that takes place during decades of vision loss). To address this question, we studied crossmodal mappings psychophysically in Retinitis Pigmentosa patients with partial visual restoration by means of Argus II retinal prostheses, which incorporate an electrode array implanted on the retinal surface that stimulates still-viable ganglion cells with a video stream from a head-mounted camera...

BACKGROUND: Fine tactile sensation plays an important role in motor relearning after stroke. However, little is known about its dynamics in post-stroke recovery, principally due to a lack of effective evaluation on neural responses to fine tactile stimulation. This study investigated the post-stroke alteration of cortical connectivity and its functional structure in response to fine tactile stimulation via textile fabrics by electroencephalogram (EEG)-derived functional connectivity and graph theory analyses...

Motor learning is a lifelong process. However, age-related changes to musculoskeletal and sensory systems alter the relationship (or mapping) between sensory input and motor output, and thus potentially affect motor learning. Here we asked whether age affects the ability to adapt to and retain a novel visuomotor mapping learned during overground walking. We divided participants into one of three groups (n = 12 each) based on chronological age: a younger-aged group (20-39 years old); a middle-aged group (40-59 years old); and an older-aged group (60-80 years old)...

INTRODUCTION: Freezing of gait (FoG) is one of the most disabling gait disorders in Parkinson's disease (PD), reflecting motor and cognitive impairments, mainly related to dopamine deficiency. Recent studies investigating kinematic and kinetic factors affecting gait in these patients showed a postural instability characterized by disturbed weight-shifting, inappropriate anticipatory postural adjustment, worse reactive postural control, and a difficulty executing complex motor tasks (i...

Objective: To investigate the effects of mirror neuron theory-based visual feedback therapy (VFT) on restoration of upper limb function of stroke patients and motor-related cortical function using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Methods: Hemiplegic stroke patients were randomly divided into two groups: a VFT group and a control (CTL) group. Sixteen patients in the VFT group received conventional rehabilitation (CR) and VFT for 8 weeks, while 15 patients in the CTL group received only CR...

The hallmark of long-term retention of sensorimotor adaptation is a faster relearning when similar perturbations are encountered again. However, what processes underlie this saving effect is in debate. Though motor adaptation is traditionally viewed as a type of procedural learning, its savings has been recently shown to be solely based on a quick recall of explicit adaptation strategy. Here, we showed that adaptation to a novel error-invariant perturbation without an explicit strategy could enable subsequent savings...

BACKGROUND: Functional electrical stimulation (FES) plus body weight-supported treadmill training (BWSTT) provide effective gait training for poststroke patients with abnormal gait. These features promote a successful active motor relearning of ambulation in stroke survivors. AIM: This is a retrospective study to assess the effect of FES plus BWSTT for gait rehabilitation in patients poststroke. DESIGN: A retrospective case-matched study. SETTING: Participants were recruited from a rehabilitation department in an acute university-affiliated hospital...

Integration of sensory and motor information is one-step, among others, that underlies the successful production of goal-directed hand movements necessary for interacting with our environment. Disruption of sensorimotor integration is prevalent in many neurologic disorders, including stroke. In most stroke survivors, persistent paresis of the hand reduces function and overall quality of life. Current rehabilitative methods are based on neuroplastic principles to promote motor learning that focuses on regaining motor function lost due to paresis, but the sensory contributions to motor control and learning are often overlooked and currently understudied...

Bumblebees Bombus terrestris are good at learning to distinguish between patterned flowers. They can differentiate between flowers that differ only in their patterning of scent, surface texture, temperature, or electrostatic charge, in addition to visual patterns. As recently shown, bumblebees trained to discriminate between nonvisual scent patterns can transfer this learning to visually patterned flowers that show similar spatial patterning to the learnt scent patterns. Bumblebees can, therefore, transfer learnt patterns between different sensory modalities, without needing to relearn them...