This single-participant case study examines the feasibility of using custom virtual reality (VR) gaming software in the home environment for low-dose Hand Arm Bimanual Intensive Training (HABIT). A 10-year-old with right unilateral cerebral palsy participated in this trial. Fine and gross motor skills as well as personal goals for motor outcomes were assessed before and after the intervention using the Box and Blocks Test, Nine-Hole Peg Test, and Canadian Occupational Performance Measure. Movement intensities collected via the VR hardware accelerometers, VR game scores, and task accuracy were recorded via the HABIT-VR software as indices of motor performance. The child and family were instructed to use the HABIT-VR games twice daily for 30 minutes over a 14-day period and asked to record when they used the system. The child used the system and completed the 14-hour, low-dose HABIT-VR intervention across 22 days. There was no change in Box and Blocks Test and Nine-Hole Peg Test scores before and after the intervention. Canadian Occupational Performance Measure scores increased but did not reach the clinically relevant threshold, due to high scores at baseline. Changes in motor task intensities during the use of VR and mastery of the VR bimanual tasks suggested improved motor efficiency. This case study provides preliminary evidence that HABIT-VR is useful for promoting adherence to HABIT activities and for the maintenance of upper extremity motor skills in the home setting.

A stroke is a medical emergency characterized by a sudden onset of focal neurological deficits due to an interruption in the blood flow to the brain tissues, with signs and symptoms persisting for more than 24 hours. Motor, sensory, recognition, language, and perceptual deficiencies are typical signs of the disease, depending on the areas affected, the size of the injury, and the origin of the injury. Patients who have had a stroke frequently have problems like weakness, stiffness, and altered movement patterns in addition to poor balance and mobility issues. Numerous physiotherapeutic strategies concentrate on helping stroke victims recover quickly. Stroke-related mortality rates have decreased over the past few decades due to advancements in stroke therapy and rehabilitation. One approach that can be primarily used to normalization of tone is facilitation by Rood\'s technique. The present case report is of a 45-year-old female with a history of hypertension presented with complaints of weakness on the right side of the body. The patient had right hemiplegia with more involvement of the right upper extremity. The patient underwent a decompressive craniotomy. On investigation, the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) report revealed an area of blood density attenuation with multiple air foci in the left gangliocapsular region. Treatment was started after the patient was operated on. An approach-oriented rehabilitation program was planned for the patient. Physiotherapy maneuvers such as the proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) approach and Rood\'s approach were used to restore and normalize functional potencies and recover the patient\'s condition. Oral facial facilitation was also used for swallowing frequency control, sensory awareness, and motor control. Posttreatment changes such as changes in muscle tone, strength, and mobility, which are essential for patients with the activity of daily living (ADLs), were observed. Outcome measures used in this patient are the Functional Independence of Measures (FIM) scale, Brunnstrom grading, voluntary control grading, and the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS).

Paraplegia remains the most devastating complication following thoracoabdominal aortic surgery. Motor-evoked potential (MEP) monitoring has been widely used to assess intraoperative motor function. MEP amplitude is affected by various factors, including anesthetic agents and measurement time; however, there are no reports regarding MEP monitoring using remimazolam in thoracoabdominal aortic surgery. A 57-year-old woman underwent open repair of a thoracic descending aorta for a chronic dissecting aortic aneurysm under remimazolam and remifentanil anesthesia. The administration rate of remimazolam was adjusted using spectral edge frequency of SedLine®, which ranged from 0.2 to 1.0 mg/kg/h after anesthetic induction with 12 mg/kg/h. Muscle MEPs were obtained using subdermal needle electrodes at the abductor pollicis brevis muscle and abductor hallucis. There were no significant changes, which were defined as a 50% reduction of MEP amplitude from each baseline value, including during split circulation. On postoperative day one, she had no motor deficits nor signs of intraoperative awareness. Remimazolam might be well tolerated for MEP monitoring in patients undergoing thoracic descending aortic aneurysm surgery.

Three patients who exhibited hemiplegic symptoms on conventional brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), during maintenance treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, are reported. All patients exhibited unilateral motor weakness and poor hand function during chemotherapy. Conventional MRI revealed no definite abnormal lesions. However, in diffusion tensor tractography, the affected corticospinal tract on the contralateral side, consistently with clinical dysfunction, revealed disrupted integrity, decreased fractional anisotropy, and increased apparent diffusion coefficient compared to the results of the unaffected side or control participants. Control participants matched for age, sex, and duration from leukemia diagnosis, who underwent chemotherapy but had no motor impairments, exhibited preserved integrity of both corticospinal tracts. Diffusion tensor tractography can help evaluate patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and neurological dysfunction.

Most of motor recovery usually occurs within the first 3 months after stroke. Herein is reported a remarkable late recovery of the right upper-limb motor function after a left middle cerebral artery stroke. This recovery happened progressively, from two to 12 years post-stroke onset, and along a proximo-distal gradient, including dissociated finger movements after 5 years. Standardized clinical assessment and quantified analysis of the reach-to-grasp movement were repeated over time to characterize the recovery. Twelve years after stroke onset, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) analyses of the corticospinal tracts were carried out to investigate the plasticity mechanisms and efferent pathways underlying motor control of the paretic hand. Clinical evaluations and quantified movement analysis argue for a true neurological recovery rather than a compensation mechanism. DTI showed a significant decrease of fractional anisotropy, associated with a severe atrophy, only in the upper part of the left corticospinal tract (CST), suggesting an alteration of the CST at the level of the infarction that is not propagated downstream. The finger opposition movement of the right paretic hand was associated with fMRI activations of a broad network including predominantly the contralateral sensorimotor areas. Motor evoked potentials were normal and the selective stimulation of the right hemisphere did not elicit any response of the ipsilateral upper limb. These findings support the idea that the motor control of the paretic hand is mediated mainly by the contralateral sensorimotor cortex and the corresponding CST, but also by a plasticity of motor-related areas in both hemispheres. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a high quality upper-limb recovery occurring more than 2 years after stroke with a genuine insight of brain plasticity mechanisms.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the relationship between sensory processing and motor development in very preterm infants. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of motor development with sensory processing among such infants with developmental delay and those who had typical development at the ages of 8 and 12 months.
METHODS: This prospective case-control study included 61 preterm infants (31 males, 30 females, mean gestational age: 29.1 weeks). The infants had a gestational age of 32 weeks or less and a current corrected age of 8 months, and they had spent at least 15 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. Motor development was assessed with the Neuro-sensory Motor Developmental Assessment (NSMDA), and sensory processing was evaluated with the Test of Sensory Functions in Infants (TSFI).
RESULTS: There were very strong positive correlations between the gross and fine motor scores of the NSMDA and the TSFI`s subdomain scores and total scores (r=0.85-0.93, p < 0.001). There were also very strong negative correlations between the functional level according to the NSMDA and the subdomain scores and total scores of the TSFI (r=-0.89-0.94, p < 0.001).
CONCLUSIONS: The results show that sensory processing and motor development are related parts of the development of very preterm infants. In the early rehabilitation process, therapists should comprehensively take motor and sensory development into consideration.

Most studies concerning congenital mirror movements (CMMs) have been focused on the motor organization in the distal hand muscles exclusively. To the best of our knowledge, there is no data on motor organization pattern of lower extremities, and a scarcity of data on the significance of forearm and arm muscles in CMMs. Here, we describe the case of a 19-year-old boy presenting mirror movements. In these terms, a 10-year transcranial magnetic stimulation study demonstrated that the motor organization pattern of the arm muscles was different from that of distal hand and forearm muscles even in the same upper extremity, and that the lower extremities showed the same pathways as healthy children. Moreover, in this case, an ipsilateral motor evoked potentials (MEPs) for distal hand muscles increased in amplitude with age, even though the intensity of mirror movements decreased. In the arm muscles, however, it was concluded that the contralateral MEPs increased in amplitude with age.

A patient with motor conversion disorder presented with a functional paresis of the left hand. After exclusion of structural brain damage, she was repeatedly examined with whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging, while she performed visually paced finger-tapping tasks. The dorsal premotor cortex showed a bilateral deactivation in the acute-subacute phase. Recovery from unilateral hand paresis was associated with a gradual increase in task-based activation of the dorsal premotor cortex bilaterally. The right medial prefrontal cortex displayed the opposite pattern, showing initial task-based activation that gradually diminished with recovery. The inverse dynamics of premotor and medial prefrontal activity over time were found during unimanual finger-tapping with the affected and non-affected hand as well as during bimanual finger-tapping. These observations suggest that reduced premotor and increased medial prefrontal activity reflect an effector-independent cortical dysfunction in conversion paresis which gradually disappears in parallel with clinical remission of paresis. The results link the medial prefrontal and dorsal premotor areas to the generation of intentional actions. We hypothesise that an excessive \'veto\' signal generated in medial prefrontal cortex along with decreased premotor activity might constitute the functional substrate of conversion disorder. This notion warrants further examination in a larger group of affected patients.

Though schizophrenia (SCZ) is classically defined based on positive symptoms and the negative symptoms of the disease prove to be debilitating for many patients, motor deficits are often present as well. A growing literature highlights the importance of motor systems and networks in the disease, and it may be the case that dysfunction in motor networks relates to the pathophysiology and etiology of SCZ. To test this and build upon recent work in SCZ and in at-risk populations, we investigated cortical and cerebellar motor functional networks at rest in SCZ and controls using publically available data. We analyzed data from 82 patients and 88 controls. We found key group differences in resting-state connectivity patterns that highlight dysfunction in motor circuits and also implicate the thalamus. Furthermore, we demonstrated that in SCZ, these resting-state networks are related to both positive and negative symptom severity. Though the ventral prefrontal cortex and corticostriatal pathways more broadly have been implicated in negative symptom severity, here we extend these findings to include motor-striatal connections, as increased connectivity between the primary motor cortex and basal ganglia was associated with more severe negative symptoms. Together, these findings implicate motor networks in the symptomatology of psychosis, and we speculate that these networks may be contributing to the etiology of the disease. Overt motor deficits in SCZ may signal underlying network dysfunction that contributes to the overall disease state. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4535-4545, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

BACKGROUND: Lithium is known to cause certain neurological deficits. However, reports of aphasia secondary to lithium toxicity are scant. We report the case of a 70 year old African American woman with a history of schizoaffective disorder and mild dementia who developed transient intermittent aphasia secondary to lithium toxicity.
METHODS: Patient was admitted because of agitation, delusional behavior, and pressured speech. Her previous medications included divalproex sodium 500 mg po bid, valproic acid 250 mg po qd, risperidone 3.5 mg po bid, lorazepam 1 mg po bid, amlodipine besylate 5 mg po qd, levothyroxine sodium 25 mcg po qd, gabapentin 300 mg po qd, amantadine HCl 100 mg po bid, and aspirin 81 mg po qd. Since patient\'s symptoms have not improved, she was started on lithium 300mg po bid and titrated up to 300 mg po bid and 450 mg po qhs over 7-8 days. Her lithium levels ranged from 0.4 mEq/L on 11/11/16 to 1.5 mEq/L on 11/22/16. Patient was observed to have aphasia symptoms intermittently at lithium level of 1.5 mEq/L. CT scan of head and neurology consultations were unremarkable. The Naranjo Adverse Drug Reaction Probability Scale score was 8 in the probable range for an adverse drug reaction. Patient\'s sodium was also found to be high at 148 mmol/L.
RESULTS: Lithium was discontinued and patient rehydrated with intravenous fluids. Patients aphasia resolved completely in 2-3 days.
CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians should be aware of this rarely reported side effect of lithium particularly in patients at risk for volume depletion and closely monitor fluid intake, lithium level, and potential side effects.