A Randomized Controlled Trial to Test the Effects of Repetitive Peripheral Magnetic Stimulation Versus Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation in Patients with Spastic Hemiparesis After Stroke (REPMAST): Study Protocol.

Background/objectives: Innovative therapies are needed to reduce disability, facilitate activities of daily living, and improve the quality of life in patients with stroke. Non-invasive methods of stimulating the peripheral and central nervous system are increasingly being used to enhance the effects of existing therapies in stroke rehabilitation. One potentially relevant method for achieving greater improvement is repetitive peripheral magnetic stimulation (rPMS).

Different Effect Sizes of Motor Skill Training Combined with Repetitive Transcranial versus Trans-Spinal Magnetic Stimulation in Healthy Subjects.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is used to enhance motor training (MT) performance. The use of rTMS is limited under certain conditions, such as after a stroke with severe damage to the corticospinal tract. This raises the question as to whether repetitive trans-spinal magnetic stimulation (rSMS) can also be used to improve MT.

Understanding the concept of a novel tool requires interaction of the dorsal and ventral streams.

The left hemisphere tool-use network consists of the dorso-dorsal, ventro-dorsal, and ventral streams, each with distinct computational abilities. In the dual-loop model, the ventral pathway through the extreme capsule is associated with conceptual understanding. We performed a learning experiment with fMRI to investigate how these streams interact when confronted with novel tools.

Accelerated brain ageing in sepsis survivors with cognitive long-term impairment.

In the last years, cognitive impairment was emphasized to be a prominent long-term sequelae of sepsis. The level of cognitive impairment is comparable with that in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients. Whether sepsis survivors also show a comparable brain atrophy is still unclear.