Evaluation of movement functional rehabilitation after stroke: A study via graph theory and corticomuscular coupling as potential biomarker.

Changes in the functional connections between the cerebral cortex and muscles can evaluate motor function in stroke rehabilitation. To quantify changes in functional connections between the cerebral cortex and muscles, we combined corticomuscular coupling and graph theory to propose dynamic time warped (DTW) distances for electroencephalogram (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) signals as well as two new symmetry metrics. EEG and EMG data from 18 stroke patients and 16 healthy individuals, as well as Brunnstrom scores from stroke patients, were recorded in this paper. First, calculate DTW-EEG, DTW-EMG, BNDSI and CMCSI. Then, the random forest algorithm was used to calculate the feature importance of these biological indicators. Finally, based on the results of feature importance, different features were combined and validated for classification. The results showed that the feature importance was from high to low as CMCSI/BNDSI/DTW-EEG/DTW-EMG, while the feature combination with the highest accuracy was CMCSI+BNDSI+DTW-EEG. Compared to previous studies, combining the CMCSI+BNDSI+DTW-EEG features of EEG and EMG achieved better results in the prediction of motor function rehabilitation at different levels of stroke. Our work implies that the establishment of a symmetry index based on graph theory and cortical muscle coupling has great potential in predicting stroke recovery and promises to have an impact on clinical research applications.

Effect of muscle fatigue on the cortical-muscle network: A combined electroencephalogram and electromyogram study.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) and electromyogram (EMG) signals during motion control reflect the interaction between the cortex and muscle. Therefore, dynamic information regarding the cortical-muscle system is of significance for the evaluation of muscle fatigue. We treated the cortex and muscle as a whole system and then applied graph theory and symbolic transfer entropy to establish an effective cortical-muscle network in the beta band (12-30 Hz) and the gamma band (30-45 Hz). Ten healthy volunteers were recruited to participate in the isometric contraction at the level of 30% maximal voluntary contraction. Pre- and post-fatigue EEG and EMG data were recorded. According to the Borg scale, only data with an index greater than 14<19 were selected as fatigue data. The results show that after muscle fatigue: (1) the decrease in the force-generating capacity leads to an increase in STE of the cortical-muscle system; (2) increases of dynamic forces in fatigue leads to a shift from the beta band to gamma band in the activity of the cortical-muscle network; (3) the areas of the frontal and parietal lobes involved in muscle activation within the ipsilateral hemibrain have a compensatory role. Classification based on support vector machine algorithm showed that the accuracy is improved compared to the brain network. These results illustrate the regulation mechanism of the cortical-muscle system during the development of muscle fatigue, and reveal the great potential of the cortical-muscle network in analyzing motor tasks.