Functional Lateralization of Sensorimotor Cortex for Assessing Stroke Neurorehabilitation

Stroke physical therapy effectiveness is typically measured by changes in the functionality, strength, or impairment of the trained upper limb. In addition, brain activation measures can be beneficial, especially since certain therapies induce neuroplastic changes to the brain. The goal for this thesis is to therefore investigate the effect of a neurorehabilitation clinical study on sensorimotor lateralization by assessing early and late treatment sessions. Significant lateralization differences were revealed at various time segments, which were generally before movement onset. To account for various arm movement characteristics, a measure of cortical lateralization was compared to each clinical assessment. This exhibited relationships which were not significant, yet offered linear trends which depended heavily on physical upper limb attributes as well as the clinical tests. In all, the results suggest that neuro-rehabilitation does alter lateralization of the sensorimotor cortex, which were specific to both the individual and the type of clinical assessment.