Synergistic Immediate Cortical Activation on Mirror Visual Feedback Combined With a Soft Robotic Bilateral Hand Rehabilitation System: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Yaxian Qiu; Yuxin Zheng; Yawen Liu; Wenxi Luo; Rongwei Du; Junjie Liang; Anniwaer Yilifate; Yaoyao You; Yongchun Jiang; Jiahui Zhang; Aijia Chen; Yanni Zhang; Siqi Huang; Benguo Wang; Haining Ou; Qiang Lin

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.807045

Synergistic Immediate Cortical Activation on Mirror Visual Feedback Combined With a Soft Robotic Bilateral Hand Rehabilitation System: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Front Neurosci. 2022 Feb 4:16:807045. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.807045. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yaxian Qiu¹, Yuxin Zheng¹, Yawen Liu², Wenxi Luo², Rongwei Du², Junjie Liang¹, Anniwaer Yilifate¹, Yaoyao You¹, Yongchun Jiang², Jiahui Zhang², Aijia Chen², Yanni Zhang¹, Siqi Huang², Benguo Wang^{3

4}, Haining Ou¹, Qiang Lin¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Rehabilitation, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
² Department of Rehabilitation, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
³ Department of Rehabilitation, Longgang District People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China.
⁴ Department of Rehabilitation, The Third Affiliated Hospital of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

Background: Mirror visual feedback (MVF) has been widely used in neurological rehabilitation. Due to the potential gain effect of the MVF combination therapy, the related mechanisms still need be further analyzed.

Methods: Our self-controlled study recruited 20 healthy subjects (age 22.150 ± 2.661 years) were asked to perform four different visual feedback tasks with simultaneous functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) monitoring. The right hand of the subjects was set as the active hand (performing active movement), and the left hand was set as the observation hand (static or performing passive movement under soft robotic bilateral hand rehabilitation system). The four VF tasks were designed as RVF Task (real visual feedback task), MVF task (mirror visual feedback task), BRM task (bilateral robotic movement task), and MVF + BRM task (Mirror visual feedback combined with bilateral robotic movement task).

Results: The beta value of the right pre-motor cortex (PMC) of MVF task was significantly higher than the RVF task (RVF task: -0.015 ± 0.029, MVF task: 0.011 ± 0.033, P = 0.033). The beta value right primary sensorimotor cortex (SM1) in MVF + BRM task was significantly higher than MVF task (MVF task: 0.006 ± 0.040, MVF + BRM task: 0.037 ± 0.036, P = 0.016).

Conclusion: Our study used the synchronous fNIRS to compare the immediate hemodynamics cortical activation of four visual feedback tasks in healthy subjects. The results showed the synergistic gain effect on cortical activation from MVF combined with a soft robotic bilateral hand rehabilitation system for the first time, which could be used to guide the clinical application and the future studies.

Keywords: cortical activation; functional near infrared spectroscopy; mirror visual feedback; soft robotic bilateral hand rehabilitation system; synergistic gain effect.