Twenty weeks of home-based interactive training of children with cerebral palsy improves functional abilities.

Background: Home-based training is becoming ever more important with increasing demands on the public health systems. We investigated whether individualized and supervised interactive home-based training delivered through the internet improves functional abilities in children with cerebral palsy (CP).

Methods: Thirty four children with CP (aged 9-16; mean age 10.

Failure of normal development of central drive to ankle dorsiflexors relates to gait deficits in children with cerebral palsy.

Neurophysiological markers of the central control of gait in children with cerebral palsy (CP) are used to assess developmental response to therapy. We measured the central common drive to a leg muscle in children with CP. We recorded electromyograms (EMGs) from the tibialis anterior (TA) muscle of 40 children with hemiplegic CP and 42 typically developing age-matched controls during static dorsiflexion of the ankle and during the swing phase of treadmill walking.

Altered sense of Agency in children with spastic cerebral palsy.

Background: Children diagnosed with spastic Cerebral Palsy (CP) often show perceptual and cognitive problems, which may contribute to their functional deficit. Here we investigated if altered ability to determine whether an observed movement is performed by themselves (sense of agency) contributes to the motor deficit in children with CP.

Methods: Three groups; 1) CP children, 2) healthy peers, and 3) healthy adults produced straight drawing movements on a pen-tablet which was not visible for the subjects.

Individualized, home-based interactive training of cerebral palsy children delivered through the Internet.

Background: The available health resources limit the amount of therapy that may be offered to children with cerebral palsy and the amount of training in each session may be insufficient to drive the neuroplastic changes, which are necessary for functional improvements to take place. The aim of this pilot study was to provide proof of concept that individualized and supervised interactive home-based training delivered through the internet may provide an efficient way of maintaining intensive training of children with cerebral palsy over prolonged periods.

Methods: 9 children (aged 9-13 years) with cerebral palsy were included in the study.

Childhood development of common drive to a human leg muscle during ankle dorsiflexion and gait.

Corticospinal drive has been shown to contribute significantly to the control of walking in adult human subjects. It is unknown to what extent functional change in this drive is important for maturation of gait in children. In adults, populations of motor units within a muscle show synchronized discharges during walking with pronounced coherence in the 15-50 Hz frequency band.