traumatic brain injury rehabilitation
In a recent paper by the Cohen group from Tuebingen in the journal neuro-rehabilitation neural repair, differences in functional activation maps of patients suffering from traumatic brain injury was analysed. They carried out their investigation by performing functional magnetic resonance imaging in cross section. This enabled the blood oxygenation response of people suffering from traumatic brain injury to be measured in cortical motor areas.
Defected motor systems
Thirty four people were tested who had defects in their motor systems by getting them to squeeze their hands. The patients were tested three months after their brain damage and the investigation was followed up four months later. It was found that patients who were suffering from brain injuries had a reduced imaging response when squeezing their hands in the region of the primary sensorimotor cortex, in the contralateral dorsal premotor cortex and bilaterally in supplementary areas of motor. The experiment determined that activation patterns did not show convincing differences across lesion types, this is possibly a consequence of small sampling size or bilateral damage. Interestingly it was determined that deeper shearing lesions resulted in severe motor destruction. The investigation also determined that the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging can be of great prognostic value. Â