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Home-Based Prescribed Pulmonary Exercise in Patients with Stable Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

As a systemic disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects the respiratory system, inducing restless and exercise dyspnea. It also ...

Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Shanghai Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine

10-Hz Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Reduces Heroin Cue Craving in Long-Term Addicts.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is an effective approach to modulate brain region functions. We assessed if a single tDCS session over the bilateral frontal-parietal-temporal (FPT) areas would reduce cue induced craving in heroin addicts.

Transcranial direct current stimulation of the frontal-parietal-temporal area attenuates cue-induced craving for heroin.

Recent results have shown that exercise training promotes the recovery of injured rat distal spinal cords, but are still unclear about the function of skeletal muscle in this process. Herein, rats with incomplete thoracic (T10) spinal cord injuries (SCI) with a dual spinal lesion model were subjected to four weeks of treadmill training and then were treated with complete spinal transection at T8. We found that treadmill training allowed the retention of hind limb motor function after incomplete SCI, even with a heavy load after complete spinal transection. Moreover, treadmill training alleviated the secondary injury in distal lumbar spinal motor neurons, and enhanced BDNF/TrkB expression in the lumbar spinal cord. To discover the influence of skeletal muscle contractile activity on motor function and gene expression, we adopted botulinum toxin A (BTX-A) to block the neuromuscular activity of the rat gastrocnemius muscle. BTX-A treatment inhibited the effects of treadmill training on motor function and BDNF/TrKB expression. These results indicated that treadmill training through the skeletal muscle-motor nerve-spinal cord retrograde pathway regulated neuralplasticity in the mammalian central nervous system, which induced the expression of related neurotrophins and promoted motor function recovery.

Neuromuscular interaction is required for neurotrophins-mediated locomotor recovery following treadmill training in rat spinal cord injury.

Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI), commonly seen in the clinical practice, is a major factor impeding patient rehabilitation. Enriched environment (EE) intervention is a simple and effective way to improve cognitive impairment, partially due to the rebalancing of the basal forebrain-hippocampus cholinergic signaling pathway. Epigenetic changes have been identified in many cognitive disorders. However, studies on the effects of EE on epigenetic regulation of cholinergic circuits in PSCI animal models have not yet been reported. In this study, we established a photothrombotic mouse PSCI model and showed that after EE intervention, mice with PSCI had significantly improved water maze performance, better induction of hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP), enhanced function of the basal forebrain-hippocampus cholinergic circuits of contralateral side of stroke and relatively balanced acetylation homeostasis compared to those of PSCI mice in standard environments (SE). In addition, PSCI mice in EE expressed much higher levels of p-CREB and CBP than in SE, and the chromatins bound to M-type promoter of ChAT gene were more acetylated. These results demonstrate that EE plays an important role in the improvement of PSCI and the underlying mechanism may involve in the acetylation of histones bound to the ChAT gene promoter in cholinergic circuits.

Enriched environment improves post-stroke cognitive impairment in mice by potential regulation of acetylation homeostasis in cholinergic circuits.

It is well established that electrical-stimulation frequency is crucial to determining the scale of induced neuromodulation, particularly when attempting to modulate corticospinal excitability. However, the modulatory effects of stimulation frequency are not only determined by its absolute value but also by other parameters such as power at harmonics. The stimulus pulse shape further influences parameters such as excitation threshold and fiber selectivity. The explicit role of the power in these harmonics in determining the outcome of stimulation has not previously been analyzed. In this study, we adopted an animal model of peripheral electrical stimulation that includes an amplitude-adapted pulse train which induces force enhancements with a corticospinal contribution. We report that the electrical-stimulation-induced force enhancements were correlated with the amplitude of stimulation power harmonics during the amplitude-adapted pulse train. In an exploratory analysis, different levels of correlation were observed between force enhancement and power harmonics of 20-80 Hz (r = 0.4247, p = 0.0243), 100-180 Hz (r = 0.5894, p = 0.0001), 200-280 Hz (r = 0.7002, p < 0.0001), 300-380 Hz (r = 0.7449, p < 0.0001), 400-480 Hz (r = 0.7906, p < 0.0001), 500-600 Hz (r = 0.7717, p < 0.0001), indicating a trend of increasing correlation, specifically at higher order frequency power harmonics. This is a pilot, but important first demonstration that power at high order harmonics in the frequency spectrum of electrical stimulation pulses may contribute to neuromodulation, thus warrant explicit attention in therapy design and analysis.

Chunlei Shan

School of Rehabilitation Science

Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Home-Based Prescribed Pulmonary Exercise in Patients with Stable Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease