Effect Of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation And Functional Electrical Stimulation On Upper Limb Rehabilitation Of Stroke Patients

As China steps into the aging society,we are now facing more and more challenges on health issues of the elderly people.Amongst them,the problem of dysfunction after stroke has always been difficult and urgent.Generally both the self-managing ability and independence of patients after stroke are mainly assessed by the recovery levels of upper limb functions,which account for approximately 60% of the overall body function.However,limb motor function recovery usually reaches a plateau six months after the onset of the stroke.Thus new and effective interventions are needed to be explored constantly to help patients regain their motor functions and afterwards improve their quality of life.Transcranial direct current stimulation(t DCS)and functional electrical stimulation(FES)are two of those promising techniques capable of serving such problems on stroke patients.However in China,relevant research and application on transcranial direct current stimulation(t DCS)and functional electrical stimulation(FES)techniques are still limited and immature compared to those of the foreign countries.And thus far there is still none such research on combining these two promising techinqes neither in nor out of China.In this research,we explored both the theoretical basis of joint electrical stimulation to the central nervous system and peripheral neuromuscular system and its effect on upper extremity motor function recovery of stroke patients through experimentalverification.We believe that this will further promote stroke patients' upper limb motor function and their quality of life,which also has important significance in relieving patient's family and social burden.In this assertation,we firstly reviewed relevant research of either transcranial direct current stimulation or functional electrical stimulation.To investigate the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on surface electromyography(s EMG)pattern,a pilot study of applying the technique on several healthy subjects was introduced.Afterwards,the theoretical basis of the joint electrical stimulation was described and then corroborated by a randomized,controlled clinical experiment involving the joint electrical stimulation,in which the upper limb motor function and spsticity were assessed by some clinical scales,such as FMA-UE,WMFT,and MAS.s EMG was used to study its effect on muscle activity.Transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS)was used to explore the effect of this intervention to brain activation levels and inter-hemspheric ralations,which helped us to understand more on the mechanism of brain function reconstruction.