Clinical Study Restoration of Central Programmed Movement Pattern by Temporal Electrical Stimulation-Assisted Training in Patients with Spinal Cerebellar Atrophy Ying-Zu Huang,1,2 Yao-Shun Chang,3,4 Miao-Ju Hsu,5,6

Copyright © 2015 Ying-Zu Huang et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Disrupted triphasic electromyography (EMG) patterns of agonist and antagonist muscle pairs during fast goal-directedmovements have been found in patients with hypermetria. Since peripheral electrical stimulation (ES) andmotor trainingmaymodulate motor cortical excitability through plasticitymechanisms, we aimed to investigate whether temporal ES-assistedmovement training could influence premovement cortical excitability and alleviate hypermetria in patients with spinal cerebellar ataxia (SCA). The EMG of the agonist extensor carpi radialismuscle and antagonist flexor carpi radialismuscle, premovementmotor evoked potentials (MEPs) of the flexor carpi radialis muscle, and the constant and variable errors of movements were assessed before and after 4 weeks of ES-assisted fast goal-directed wrist extension training in the training group and of general health education in the control group. Afte