El papel de la imagen cinestésica motora en la promoción de la activación de los músculos lumbricales en la mano hemiparética: un estudio controlado aleatorizado

Abstract

The objective of the investigation who gave as result this work was to investigate the effectiveness of kinaesthetic motor imagery in the activation of the hemiplegic hand muscles following stroke. Theexperiment consisted of two random groups. Movements were measuredafter treatment. The participants were ten patients with hemiplegichands (men who mean age was 74.4 years; mean time since stroke 3.05 months). All patients received three sessions of physical treatmentbased on an identical treatment protocol. Five patients were randomlyassigned to an experimental group practising kinaesthetic motorimagery of a grasp using the ‘lumbrical action’ (experimental group). The others five (control group) followed a relaxation script. All thepatients were then asked to grasp an object using the ‘lumbricalaction’. The grasps were recorded using an optoelectronic motioncapture system. The magnitude of the extension of the index fingerand the correlation of the angular displacement of the proximalphalangeal joints and the metacarpophalangeal joints were calculated.The movement time for the whole grip was calculated. The experimentalgroup demonstrated higher extension in the index finger (p = < 0.01) and they had a higher correlation coefficient (0.99) than the controlgroup (0.77) for the displacement of the proximal interphalangealjoint and the metacarpophalangeal joints. The movement time for the experimental group was faster, although the difference was not significant.

Keywords

• stroke
• hemiplegia
• hand
• motor imagery