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[A case of symptomatic paroxysmal kinesigenic dsykinesia with primary central nervous system lymphoma].

Paroxysmal dyskinesias are rare movement disorders. In one fourth of cases, a symptomatic cause can be found, e.g., brain ischemia or inflammatory diseases. We report a unique case of secondary paroxysmal kinesigenic dyskinesia (PKD). The 37-year-old patient suffered from a primary CNS lymphoma invading the right thalamus. Consecutively, he showed dystonic-athetoid movements in the left half of the body. The involuntary movements had a duration of approximately 20 s and occurred more than 100 times per day. Carbamazepine treatment showed excellent results. This is the first reported case of a symptomatic paroxysmal dyskinesia induced by a primary CNS lymphoma.

Adult↗

[Clinical symptoms, origin, and therapy of the "pusher syndrome"].

Stroke patients may exhibit the peculiar behavior of actively pushing away from the nonhemiparetic side, leading to lateral postural imbalance and a tendency to fall towards the paralyzed side. These patients use the nonparetic extremities to stem actively against attempts of passive correction towards upright orientation. This phenomenon has been called the "pusher syndrome". Recent findings disclose that the deficit leading to contraversive pushing is an altered perception of the body's orientation in relation to gravity. Pusher patients experience their body as upright when they are actually tilted to the nonhemiparetic side. In contrast, processing of visual and vestibular inputs for the determination of visual vertical was undisturbed. The results argue for a separate pathway in humans for sensing gravity apart from that for perception of the visual world. This second graviceptive system decisively contributes to our control of upright body posture. The present article describes this still largely unknown neurological disease. The clinical examination of contraversive pushing, its underlying disturbance, lesion location, and approaches for therapy are considered.

Humans↗

[Influence of retropatellar arthrosis on the proprioceptive ability of patients with gonarthrosis].

Degenerative changes of the retropatellar articular surface contribute to a great extent to functional disability in patients with osteoarthritic knees. Therefore, in the present study we examined the influence of retropatellar osteoarthritis (OA) on proprioception in patients with knee OA. Comparison of movement sense determined by threshold levels for the perception of knee motion was performed in 10 patients with severe, in 10 patients with moderate, and in 9 patients with mild retropatellar OA. In addition, detection failures occurring during movement sense measurements were analysed. At correct movement detections, threshold levels did not differ between the three groups of patients regardless the extent of retropatellar OA. In contrast, analysis of detection failures occurring during movement sense measurements revealed significantly higher failure rates with greater severity of retropatellar OA. In conclusion, our study gives evidence for increased proprioceptive deficits with greater severity of retropatellar articular surface damage. Hereby, analysis of detection failures occurring during movement sense measurements proved to be a feasible tool for the assessment of proprioceptive deficits.

Humans↗

Knee joint kinaesthesia and neuromuscular coordination during three phases of the menstrual cycle in moderately active women.

An increased incidence of sports related injuries in the premenstrual phase as well as in the menstrual phase of the menstrual cycle has been described. This may be explained by alterations in proprioception and neuromuscular coordination due to hormonal variations. Prospective, within women analysis of knee joint kinesthesia and neuromuscular coordination were performed by repeated measures analysis of variance in three hormonally verified phases of three consecutive menstrual cycles. Thirty-two healthy, moderately active female subjects volunteered to participate in the study. Twenty-five of the subjects performed at least one hormonally verified menstrual cycle. A specially designed device was used to investigate knee joint kinaesthesia and neuromuscular coordination was measured with the square hop test. These tests were carried out in the menstrual phase, ovulation phase and premenstrual phase determined by hormone analyses in three consecutive menstrual cycles. An impaired knee joint kinaesthesia was detected in the premenstrual phase and the performance of square hop test was significantly improved in the ovulation phase compared to the other two phases. The results of this study indicate that the variation of sex hormones in the menstrual cycle has an effect on performance of knee joint kinaesthesia and neuromuscular coordination.

Adult↗

Can proprioception really be improved by exercises?

There is little question that ankle disc training can improve ankle muscle motor performance in a unipedal balance task, most likely through improved strength and coordination [62] and possibly endurance. How much of the observed improvement in motor performance is due to improved ankle proprioception remains unknown. We have reviewed a number of theoretical ways in which training might improve proprioception for moderately challenging weight-bearing situations such as balancing on one leg. Although the relevant experiments have yet to be performed to test this hypothesis, any improvement would theoretically help to reduce injuries at these moderate levels of challenge. We question, however, whether these exercises can ever improve the reactive response required to prevent injury under the most challenging time-critical situations. If confirmed, this limitation needs to be acknowledged by authors and practitioners alike. Alternative protective strategies for the most challenging time-critical situations should be sought. We conclude that, despite their widespread acceptance, current exercises aimed at "improving proprioception" have not been demonstrated to achieve that goal. We have outlined theoretical scenarios by which proprioception might be improved, but these are speculative. The relevant experiments remain to be conducted. We argue that even if they were proven to improve proprioception, under the best circumstances such exercises could only prevent injury under slow to intermediate rate provocations to the joint musculoligamentous complex in question.

Afferent Pathways↗

Interaction between different sensory cues in the control of human gait.

This experiment investigates the interaction of different sensory cues in the control of propulsive forces in human gait which in turn allow the body's forward progression to be regulated. The aim of this work was to determine how optic flow and leg-somatosensory feedback interact in this control. We therefore determined whether the responses to sinusoidal perturbations of optic flow were accentuated when leg-somatosensory feedback was modified by varying the support resistance. Subjects walked on a treadmill which was driven by their own locomotor activity (1) with a sinusoidal variation of optic flow velocity, (2) with a sinusoidal variation of support resistance which modified leg-somatosensory information and (3) with both visual and leg-somatosensory modification at different frequencies. The response of the subject was measured as changes in speed and propulsive power. The response to sinusoidal perturbations of optic flow was found to be increased and time delayed when visual perturbations are coupled with support perturbations in comparison with the response observed with visual perturbations only. This result shows the influence of leg-somatosensory feedback on the weighting of optic flow. Inversely, it was also found that the motor response to support perturbation was different when the flow was congruent (i.e., corresponding to the subject's virtual speed) and when it was not. This latter result shows the influence of optic flow on the weighting of leg-somatosensory feedback. The interaction between optic flow and leg-somatosensory feedback argues in favor of a multimodal sensory control of propulsive forces. This multimodal sensory control would be based on all the sensory feedback and all their mutual sensorial interaction. Therefore, the modification of one sensory input modifies not only this input but also the integration of the other inputs.

Adult↗

Comparison of brain activity during different types of proprioceptive inputs: a positron emission tomography study.

It has been shown that the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, as well as the supplementary motor area (SMA), are involved in central processing of proprioceptive signals during passive and active arm movements. However, it is not clear whether different cortical areas are involved in processing of different proprioceptive inputs (skin, joint, muscle receptors), what their relative contributions might be, where kinesthetic sensations are formed within the CNS, and how they interact when the full peripheral proprioceptive machinery acts. In this study we investigated the representation of the brain structures involved in the perception of passive limb movement and illusory movement generated by muscle tendon vibration. Changes in cortical activity as indicated by changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) were measured using positron emission tomography (PET). Twelve subjects were studied under four conditions: (1) passive flexion-extension movement (PM) of the left forearm; (2) induced illusions of movements (VI) similar to the real PM, induced by alternating vibration of biceps and triceps tendons (70-80 Hz) at the elbow; (3) alternating vibration of biceps and triceps tendons (with 20-50 Hz) without induced kinesthetic illusions (VN); and (4) rest condition (RE). The results show different patterns of cortex activation. In general, the activation during passive movement was higher in comparison with both kinds of vibration, and activation during vibrations with induced illusions of movement was more prominent than during vibrations without induced illusions. When the PM condition was contrasted with the other conditions we found the following areas of activation -- the primary motor (MI) and somatosensory area (SI), the SMA and the supplementary somatosensory area (SSA). In conditions where passive movements and illusory movements were contrasted with rest, some temporal areas, namely primary and associative auditory cortex, were activated, as well as secondary somatosensory cortex (SII). Our data show that different proprioceptive inputs, which induce sensation of movement, are associated with differently located activation patterns in the SI/MI and SMA areas of the cortex. In general, the comparison of activation intensities under different functional conditions indicates the involvement of SII in stimulus perception generation and of the SI/MI and SMA areas in the processing of proprioceptive input. Activation of the primary and secondary auditory cortex might reflect the interaction between somatosensory and auditory systems in movement sense generation. SSA might also be involved in movement sense generation and/or maintenance.

Adult↗

Fusion of vestibular and podokinesthetic information during self-turning towards instructed targets.

When observers step about their vertical axis ("active turning") without vision they dispose of essentially two sources of information that can tell them by how much they have turned: the vestibular cue which reflects head rotation in space and the "podokinesthetic" cue, a compound of leg proprioceptive afferents and efference copy signals which reflects the observer's motion relative to his support. We ask how these two cues are fused in the process leading to the perception of self-displacement during active turning. To this end we compared the performance of observers in three angular navigation tasks which differed with regard to the number and type of available motion cues: (1) Passive rotation, vestibular cue ( ves) only; observers are standing on a platform which is being rotated. (2) Treadmill stepping, podokinesthetic cue ( pod) only; observers step counter to the rotating platform so as to remain stable in space. (3) Active turning, ves and pod available; observers step around on the stationary platform. In all three tasks, angular velocity varied from trial to trial (15, 30, 60 degrees /s) but was constant during trials. Perception was probed by having the observers signal when they thought to have reached a previously instructed angular displacement, either in space or relative to the platform ("target"; range 60-1080 degrees ). Performance was quantified in terms of the targeting gain (displacement reached by the observer divided by target angle) and of the random error ( E(r)), which records an observer's deviation during single trials from his average performance. Confirming previous observations, E(r) was found to be significantly smaller during active turning than during passive turning, and we now complement these observations by showing that it is also significantly smaller than during treadmill stepping. This behaviour of E(r) is compatible with the idea that ves and pod be averaged during active turning. On the other hand, the observed characteristics of the targeting gain ( G(T)) support this idea only for the case of fast rotations (60 degrees /s); at lower velocities, the gain found during active turning was clearly not the average of the G(T) values recorded in the passive and the treadmill modes. We therefore also discuss alternative scenarios as to how ves and pod could interact, among these one based on the concept of a vestibular eigenmodel. A common denominator of these scenarios is that ves assumes the role of a prerequisite for an optimal use of pod during turning on a stationary support, without itself entering the calculation of displacement perception; this perception would be based exclusively on pod. Finally, it was a consistent observation that during passive rotations cognitive mechanisms fill in for the decaying vestibular signal in the context of the present navigation task, enabling observers to achieve large displacements surprisingly well although the duration of these movements exceeds by far the conventionally cited value of the central vestibular time constant (=20 s).

Adolescent↗

Spatial and temporal constraints on performance in children with movement co-ordination problems.

Eight 10-year-old children manifesting movement co-ordination problems (MCP), as assessed by the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC), and a matched control group of eight children of a similar age without such problems, were required to carry out a laboratory ball-catching task. The task was constrained in such a way as to allow separate kinematic analyses of reaching (Experiment 1) and grasping (Experiment 2) subactions. Significant differences between the groups, in favour of the control group, were found with respect to both spatial and temporal performance in intercepting the moving ball. The MCP children were shown to initiate reaching movements later and to initiate grasping movement of the fingers earlier in time than the controls. MCP children also made more spatial errors. These findings are discussed in the context of the distinction made in the neuropsychological literature between proximal and distal motor control systems and the visual perceptual system.

Biomechanical Phenomena↗

Adaptation of movement endpoints to perturbations of visual feedback.

We investigated the extent to which humans can quickly adapt their goal-directed arm movements to perturbed feedback. We predicted that the magnitude of adaptation to a changed relationship between vision and kinesthesia would depend on the type of perturbation, being largest when the perturbation can be generalized within egocentric frames of reference. To test this prediction we asked subjects to align a real 5-cm cube so that they could feel, but not see, with a simulation that they saw via a mirror. Subjects made successive movements between target locations in a sequence of adaptation and test phases. During adaptation phases, subjects received continuous visual feedback about the position of the real cube. The feedback was either veridical or perturbed. The perturbations were consistent with either a uniform translation, a scaling or a rotation. The latter two were relative to a central position between all the targets. During test phases, subjects received no visual feedback. We compared test movement endpoints after perturbed feedback with ones after veridical feedback. We found about 40% adaptation to translation, 20% to scaling and 10% to rotation. This difference in magnitude is consistent with the ease with which the transformation can be generalized within egocentric frames of reference. Changing the task so that it required different arm postures did not change the magnitude of adaptation, so postural configuration of the arm does not appear to be critical. Nevertheless, transfer to the unexposed arm was incomplete for translations and rotations, though it was complete for scaling, suggesting that at least part of the adaptation is posture based. We conclude that the adaptation to different kinds of perturbations not only differs in extent but also involves different (egocentric) mechanisms.

Adaptation, Physiological↗

Kinesthetic perception of visually specified axes.

The purpose of this research was to determine whether human subjects could align the forearm more accurately to the orientation of an external object than to earth-fixed vertical and trunk-fixed anterior-posterior (a-p) axes. Ten young adults aligned the unseen forearm to earth-fixed vertical and trunk-fixed a-p axes, and to a visually presented rod (external visual axis) held by an experimenter in various oblique vertical and horizontal orientations. The head and trunk orientations were varied by left/right lateral flexion when aligning the forearm to vertical plane axes and by rotation about the vertical axis when aligning the forearm to horizontal plane axes. Perceptual errors for aligning the forearm to vertical plane axes were much lower when aligning the forearm to earth-fixed vertical than to an external visual axis positioned in a vertical plane. Furthermore, the perceptual errors for aligning the forearm to the visually presented rod were correlated with rod orientation while errors for aligning the forearm to vertical while viewing the rod were unaffected by rod orientations. Clearly, human subjects cannot use an oblique external visually presented axis to provide a frame of reference for accurate perception of forearm orientation in vertical planes. Perceptual errors were similar for aligning the forearm to the horizontal trunk-fixed a-p axis and external visual axis when head and trunk orientation were varied. These perceptual errors were not correlated with rod orientation in the horizontal plane, giving no evidence of bias toward the trunk or external visual axis in horizontal plane perception of forearm orientation. Thus, humans can use either the trunk-fixed a-p axis or the visually specified orientation of an external object as a frame of reference for the kinesthetic system to specify forearm orientation in the horizontal plane.

Adult↗

Kinaesthetic neurons in thalamus of humans with and without tremor.

Increased afferent input may alter receptive field sizes, properties and somatotopographic representation in the cortex. Changes in the motor thalamus may also occur as a result of altered afferent input. Such plasticity has been implicated in both sensory and movement disorders. Using tremor as a model of augmented afferent input to kinaesthetic/deep neurons representing the shaking limbs, we studied the representation and properties of these neurons in human thalamus in patients with resting tremor (RestTr) from Parkinson's disease, patients with action- or posture-induced tremor (ActionTr), and patients without tremor (NoTr). Data were collected during stereotactic thalamotomy or insertion of deep brain stimulators for relief of pain or movement disorder. Using microelectrode recording, 58 kinaesthetic neurons responding to wrist and/or elbow movement were studied by mapping the receptive field, carefully isolating each joint during testing. There were no significant differences in the proportions of single and multijoint responsive neurons in the different patient groups (RestTr, ActionTr and NoTr). The borders between tactile-cutaneous, deep-kinaesthetic and voluntary cell representations in the thalamus were mapped in 74 patients and compared between the different tremor groups. A significant difference in kinaesthetic representation was found: both the RestTr and ActionTr groups had a significantly greater kinaesthetic representation than the NoTr patients. There was an expansion of kinaesthetic representation in patients with chronic increased afferent drive from tremor, without alteration in RF size. No decrease in tactile representation was found, suggesting that the increase in kinaesthetic representation does not occur at the expense of tactile representation. These data suggest that plasticity can occur at the thalamic level in humans and may contribute to the pathogenesis of tremor.

Action Potentials↗

Effects of Parkinson's disease on visuomotor adaptation.

Visuomotor adaptation to a kinematic distortion was investigated in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and age-matched controls. Participants performed pointing movements in which the visual feedback of hand movement, displayed as a screen cursor, was normal (pre-exposure condition) or rotated by 90 degrees counterclockwise (exposure condition). Aftereffects were assessed in a post-exposure condition in which the visual feedback of hand movement was set back to normal. In pre- and early-exposure trials, both groups showed similar initial directional error (IDE) and movement straightness (RMSE, root mean square error), but the PD group showed reduced movement smoothness (normalized jerk, NJ) and primary submovement to total movement distance ratios (PTR). During late-exposure the PD subjects, compared with controls, showed larger IDE, RMSE, NJ, and smaller PTR scores. Moreover, PD patients showed smaller aftereffects than the controls during the post-exposure condition. Overall, the PD group showed both slower and reduced adaptation compared with the control group. These results are discussed in terms of reduced signal-to-noise ratio in feedback signals related to increased movement variability and/or disordered kinesthesia, deficits in movement initiation, impaired selection of initial movement direction, and deficits in internal model formation in PD patients. We conclude that Parkinson's disease impairs visuomotor adaptation.

Adaptation, Physiological↗

From head orientation to hand control: evidence of both neck and vestibular involvement in hand drawing.

This research investigated the effect of head to trunk relation in a sensorimotor drawing task. In the first experiment, seated participants were asked to reproduce with eyes closed geometric shapes (square or diamond) with the tip of their right index finger in the frontoparallel plane. Their head was either aligned with the trunk or tilted 25 degrees towards the left or right shoulder. Results showed that drawings were subjected to an overall rotation of a few degrees in the opposite direction to the tilt. In two subsequent experiments, the respective contribution of both otoliths and neck receptors to this head tilt effect was investigated. In Experiment 2, seated participants kept their head straight but were subjected to 2.5 mA vestibular galvanic stimulation (GVS). Results indicated that GVS induced a small but significant deviation of the drawings towards the anode. Finally, in Experiment 3, subjects performed the drawing task either seated upright (seated condition) or lying on their back (supine condition). Unlike in the seated condition, tilting the head towards the shoulders in a supine posture does not modulate afferents from the otolith stimulation and therefore mainly stimulates neck receptors. Head tilt induced rotations of hand-drawn reproductions in both seated and supine conditions, suggesting a significant contribution of neck afferents in the control of hand motion in space in the absence of vision. Overall the data provided evidence for a strong head-hand linkage during kinaesthetically guided drawing movements.

Adult↗

Influence of movement speed on accuracy and coordination of reaching movements to memorized targets in three-dimensional space in a deafferented subject.

Multiarticular reaching movements at different speeds produce differential demands for the on-line control of ongoing movements and for the predictive control of intersegmental dynamics. The aim of this study was to assess the ability of a proprioceptively deafferented patient and aged-matched control subjects to make precise and coordinated three-dimensional reaching movements at different speeds without vision during the movement. A patient with a complete loss of proprioception below the neck (C.F.) and five control subjects made reaching movements to four remembered visual targets at slow, natural, and fast speeds. All movements were performed without vision of the arm during the movements. The spatial accuracy, the movement kinematics and the interjoint coordination of these movements were analyzed. Results showed that control subjects made larger spatial errors at both slow and fast speeds than at natural speed. However, they synchronized motions at the shoulder and elbow joints and kept most movement kinematic features invariant across speed conditions. In contrast, C.F. failed to produce smooth and simultaneous motions at the shoulder and elbow joints at all speeds. Surprisingly, however, he made much larger errors than control subjects at slow and natural speeds, but not at fast speed. Analysis of patterns of interjoint coordination revealed that, when instructed to move fast, C.F. initiated arm movements by fixing the elbow while moving the shoulder joint to damp interaction torques exerted on the elbow joint from motion of the upper arm. The results demonstrated that, although proprioceptive loss disrupted normal control of multijoint movements at all speeds, when performing relatively fast three-dimensional movements, C.F. could control intersegmental dynamics by reducing the number of active joints. More importantly, the results highlight the dual role of proprioception in controlling multijoint movements; that is, to provide important cues both for the predictive control of interaction torques and for the synchronization of adjacent joints even when interactive torques are very small. These findings support the idea that proprioceptive input is used by the CNS to update an internal model of limb dynamics that adapts the motor plan according to biomechanical contexts.

Aged↗

The kinaesthetic perception of Euclidean distance: a study of the detour effect.

An experiment investigated the mechanisms by which humans estimate Euclidean distances on the basis of kinaesthetic cues. Blindfolded participants followed straight and curvilinear paths with a hand-held stylus (encoding phase). Then, with a straight movement, they estimated the Euclidean distance between the start- and end-points of the path (response phase). The experiment contrasted an On-axis condition, in which encoding and response movements were spatially aligned, and an Off-axis condition, in which they were displaced laterally. Performances were slightly more accurate in the On-axis condition than in the Off-axis condition. In both conditions, however, errors were consistently smaller when the path covered a larger surface. The results showed that small paths yielded an overestimation of the Euclidean distance, the relative errors increasing with the length of curvilinear paths. The findings are compared with results of other studies in which distances were estimated on the basis of haptic cues.

Arm↗

Influence of whole-body pitch tilt and kinesthetic cues on the perceived gravity-referenced eye level.

We investigated the effects of whole body tilt and lifting the arm against gravity on perceptual estimates of the Gravity-Referenced Eye Level (GREL), which corresponds to the subjective earth-referenced horizon. The results showed that the perceived GREL was influenced by body tilt, that is, lowered with forward tilt and elevated with backward tilt of the body. GREL estimates obtained by arm movements without vision were more biased by whole-body tilt than purely visual estimates. Strikingly, visual GREL estimates became more dependent on whole-body tilt when the indication of level was obtained by arm lifting. These findings indicate that active motor involvement and/or the addition of kinesthetic information increases the body tilt-induced bias when making GREL judgements. The introduction of motor/kinaesthetic cues may induce a switch from a semi-geocentric to a more egocentric frame of reference. This result challenges the assumption that combining non-conflicting multiple sensory inputs and/or using intermodal information provided during action should improve perceptual performance.

Adult↗

Timing of bimanual movements and deafferentation: implications for the role of sensory movement effects.

In a repetitive tapping task, the within-hand variability of intertap intervals is reduced when participants tap with both hands instead of single-handedly. This bimanual advantage has been attributed to timer as opposed to motor variance (according to the Wing-Kristofferson model; Helmuth and Ivry 1996) and related to the additional sensory consequences of the movement of the extra hand in the bimanual case (Drewing et al. 2002). In the present study the effect of sensory feedback of the movement on this advantage was investigated by comparing the results of a person (IW) deafferented below the neck with those of age-matched controls. IW showed an even more pronounced bimanual advantage than controls, suggesting that the bimanual advantage is not due to actual sensory feedback. These results support another hypothesis, namely that bimanual timing profits from the averaging of different central control signals that relate to each effector's movements.

Adult↗