Neurophysiological Assessment of Motor Disorders in Patients with Brain Injury

Assessment of spinal cord pathology following trauma using early changes in the spinal cord evoked potentials: A pharmacological and morphological study in the rat

“…The SCEPs are compound action potentials recorded from electrodes placed either in the epidural space or on the spine after stimulation of peripheral nerves or even the spinal cord 2–4. The amplitude of the negative peak reflects the number of conducting axons in the investigated spinal tracts 5, 22. The conduction velocity of the axons in the spinal cord is displayed by the latency of the different peaks 23–25…”

“…Impact injury to the cord produced by a 400 g cm force results in severe contusion of the dura and the spinal cord. In this condition, the SCEP disappears immediately, and a broad, positive injury potential appears 5, 6, 11. This indicates that SCEPs are very sensitive to spinal cord injuries.…”

“…The negative waves reflect excitatory events in the interneurons of the dorsal horn, whereas the positive wave is associated with the inhibitory activity 23. Field mapping studies show that the lateral half of the dorsal horn is electrically negative, whereas most of the ventral horn is positive 4, 5, 20, 23, 25. The distribution of field potentials varies with the particular nerve stimulated, the segments for which the recordings are made, or both 22…”

Epidemiologic characteristics and sequelae of closed head‐injured children and adolescents: A review

“…On the other hand, in a study of 344 CHI children less than 18 years old, Brink, Imbus, and Woo-Sam (1980) determined a combination of spasticity and ataxia as the most frequent problem. Other initial motor deficits documented in case studies of young children (5 to 7 years old) include difficulty in maintaining steadiness in status disposition, mild kinetic tremors, difficulty in fine motor coordination, difficulty in copying symbols, increased deep tendon reflexes, difficulty with rapid alternating movements (right to left/left to right), and clonus (Dimitrijevic, Dimitrijevic Kinalski, McKay, & Sherwood, 1987;Fuld & Fisher, 1977;Rourke, Fisk, & Strang, 1986). However, Levin, Eisenberg, and Miner's (1983) review suggested motor skill, motor speed, and memory are the most profoundly impaired functioning following CHI in children.…”

Chronically implanted electrodes for repeated stimulation and recording of spinal cord potentials

“…This technique can detect acute changes of the spinal cord functions after different kinds of injury. The growing number of clinical studies has reported the usefulness of EPs in assessing the spinal cord functions in various neurological disorders (Baba et al, 1996;Dimitrijevic et al, 1992), after traumatic injuries and during spinal surgery (Koyanagi et al, 1993;Luk et al, 2001). However, there is a limited number of reports using EPs for detecting long-term processes in the spinal cord, associated with secondary degeneration or neural plasticity (Ishikawa et al, 1997;Tamaki et al, 1985).…”