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Purpose: there is growing evidence that vertebral column function and dysfunction play a vital role in neuromuscular control. This invited review summarises the evidence about how vertebral column dysfunction, known as a central segmental motor control (CSMC) problem, alters neuromuscular function and how spinal adjustments (high-velocity, low-amplitude or HVLA thrusts directed at a CSMC problem) and spinal manipulation (HVLA thrusts directed at segments of the vertebral column that may not have clinical indicators of a CSMC problem) alters neuromuscular function. Methods: the current review elucidates the peripheral mechanisms by which CSMC problems, the spinal adjustment or spinal manipulation alter the afferent input from the paravertebral tissues. It summarises the contemporary model that provides a biologically plausible explanation for CSMC problems, the manipulable spinal lesion. This review also summarises the contemporary, biologically plausible understanding about how spinal adjustments enable more efficient production of muscular force. The evidence showing how spinal dysfunction, spinal manipulation and spinal adjustments alter central multimodal integration and motor control centres will be covered in a second invited review. Results: many studies have shown spinal adjustments increase voluntary force and prevent fatigue, which mainly occurs due to altered supraspinal excitability and multimodal integration. The literature suggests physical injury, pain, inflammation, and acute or chronic physiological or psychological stress can alter the vertebral column's central neural motor control, leading to a CSMC problem. The many gaps in the literature have been identified, along with suggestions for future studies. Conclusion: spinal adjustments of CSMC problems impact motor control in a variety of ways. These include increasing muscle force and preventing fatigue. These changes in neuromuscular function most likely occur due to changes in supraspinal excitab

Purpose: there is growing evidence that vertebral column function and dysfunction play a vital role in neuromuscular control. This invited review summarises the evidence about how vertebral column dysfunction, known as a central segmental motor control (CSMC) problem, alters neuromuscular function and how spinal adjustments (high-velocity, low-amplitude or HVLA thrusts directed at a CSMC problem) and spinal manipulation (HVLA thrusts directed at segments of the vertebral column that may not have clinical indicators of a CSMC problem) alters neuromuscular function. Methods: the current review elucidates the peripheral mechanisms by which CSMC problems, the spinal adjustment or spinal manipulation alter the afferent input from the paravertebral tissues. It summarises the contemporary model that provides a biologically plausible explanation for CSMC problems, the manipulable spinal lesion. This review also summarises the contemporary, biologically plausible understanding about how spinal adjustments enable more efficient production of muscular force. The evidence showing how spinal dysfunction, spinal manipulation and spinal adjustments alter central multimodal integration and motor control centres will be covered in a second invited review. Results: many studies have shown spinal adjustments increase voluntary force and prevent fatigue, which mainly occurs due to altered supraspinal excitability and multimodal integration. The literature suggests physical injury, pain, inflammation, and acute or chronic physiological or psychological stress can alter the vertebral column's central neural motor control, leading to a CSMC problem. The many gaps in the literature have been identified, along with suggestions for future studies. Conclusion: spinal adjustments of CSMC problems impact motor control in a variety of ways. These include increasing muscle force and preventing fatigue. These changes in neuromuscular function most likely occur due to changes in supraspinal excitab, NA

Despite being widely studied, the underlying mechanisms of transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (TMS) induced motor evoked potential (MEP), early cortical silent period (CSP) and rebound activity are not fully understood. Our aim is to better characterize these phenomena by combining various analysis tools on firing motor units. Responses of 29 tibialis anterior (TA) and 8 abductor pollicis brevis (APB) motor units to TMS pulses were studied using discharge rate and probability-based tools to illustrate the profile of the synaptic potentials as they develop on motoneurons in 24 healthy volunteers. According to probability-based methods, TMS pulse produces a short-latency MEP which is immediately followed by CSP that terminates at rebound activity. Discharge rate analysis, however, revealed not three, but just two events with distinct time courses; a long-lasting excitatory period (71.2 ± 9.0 ms for TA and 42.1 ± 11.2 ms for APB) and a long-latency inhibitory period with duration of 57.9 ± 9.5 ms for TA and 67.3 ± 13.8 ms for APB. We propose that part of the CSP may relate to the falling phase of net excitatory postsynaptic potential induced by TMS. Rebound activity, on the other hand, may represent tendon organ inhibition induced by MEP activated soleus contraction and/or long-latency intracortical inhibition. Due to generation of field potentials when high intensity TMS is used, this study is limited to investigate the events evoked by low intensity TMS only and does not provide information about later parts of much longer CSPs induced by high intensity TMS. Adding discharge rate analysis contributes to obtain a more accurate picture about the characteristics of TMS-induced events. These results have implications for interpreting motor responses following TMS for diagnosis and overseeing recovery from various neurological conditions., Chiropractic Center of New Zealand; Koç University School of Medicine; Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) 2211-A National Scholarship Programme for PhD Students; Australian Spine Research Foundation (ASRF)

The objective of this study was to investigate whether a single session of chiropractic care could increase strength in weak plantar flexor muscles in chronic stroke patients. Maximum voluntary contractions (strength) of the plantar flexors, soleus evoked V-waves (cortical drive), and H-reflexes were recorded in 12 chronic stroke patients, with plantar flexor muscle weakness, using a randomized controlled crossover design. Outcomes were assessed pre and post a chiropractic care intervention and a passive movement control. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to asses within and between group differences. Significance was set at p < 0.05. Following the chiropractic care intervention there was a significant increase in strength (F (1,11) = 14.49, p = 0.002; avg 64.2 +/- 77.7%) and V-wave/Mmax ratio (F(1,11) = 9.67, p = 0.009; avg 54.0 +/- 65.2%) compared to the control intervention. There was a significant strength decrease of 26.4 +/- 15.5% (p = 0.001) after the control intervention. There were no other significant differences. Plantar flexor muscle strength increased in chronic stroke patients after a single session of chiropractic care. An increase in V-wave amplitude combined with no significant changes in H-reflex parameters suggests this increased strength is likely modulated at a supraspinal level. Further research is required to investigate the longer term and potential functional effects of chiropractic care in stroke recovery., United Chiropractic Association; Hamblin Chiropractic Research Fund Trust; The Rubicon Group; Scottish Chiropractic Association; Halsa Chiropractic and Physiotherapy; New Zealand College of Chiropractic

Published: 7 September 2018, People suffering from neuromuscular disorders such as locked-in syndrome (LIS) are left in a paralyzed state with preserved awareness and cognition. In this study, it was hypothesized that changes in local hemodynamic activity, due to the activation of Broca’s area during overt/covert speech, can be harnessed to create an intuitive Brain Computer Interface based on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS). A 12-channel square template was used to cover inferior frontal gyrus and changes in hemoglobin concentration corresponding to six aloud (overtly) and six silently (covertly) spoken words were collected from eight healthy participants. An unsupervised feature extraction algorithm was implemented with an optimized support vector machine for classification. For all participants, when considering overt and covert classes regardless of words, classification accuracy of 92.88 18.49% was achieved with oxy-hemoglobin (O2Hb) and 95.14 5.39% with deoxy-hemoglobin (HHb) as a chromophore. For a six-active-class problem of overtly spoken words, 88.19 7.12% accuracy was achieved for O2Hb and 78.82 15.76% for HHb. Similarly, for a six-active-class classification of covertly spoken words, 79.17 14.30% accuracy was achieved with O2Hb and 86.81 9.90% with HHb as an absorber. These results indicate that a control paradigm based on covert speech can be reliably implemented into future Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) based on NIRS

Published: 7 September 2018, People suffering from neuromuscular disorders such as locked-in syndrome (LIS) are left in a paralyzed state with preserved awareness and cognition. In this study, it was hypothesized that changes in local hemodynamic activity, due to the activation of Broca’s area during overt/covert speech, can be harnessed to create an intuitive Brain Computer Interface based on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS). A 12-channel square template was used to cover inferior frontal gyrus and changes in hemoglobin concentration corresponding to six aloud (overtly) and six silently (covertly) spoken words were collected from eight healthy participants. An unsupervised feature extraction algorithm was implemented with an optimized support vector machine for classification. For all participants, when considering overt and covert classes regardless of words, classification accuracy of 92.88 18.49% was achieved with oxy-hemoglobin (O2Hb) and 95.14 5.39% with deoxy-hemoglobin (HHb) as a chromophore. For a six-active-class problem of overtly spoken words, 88.19 7.12% accuracy was achieved for O2Hb and 78.82 15.76% for HHb. Similarly, for a six-active-class classification of covertly spoken words, 79.17 14.30% accuracy was achieved with O2Hb and 86.81 9.90% with HHb as an absorber. These results indicate that a control paradigm based on covert speech can be reliably implemented into future Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) based on NIRS

Published: 7 September 2018, People suffering from neuromuscular disorders such as locked-in syndrome (LIS) are left in a paralyzed state with preserved awareness and cognition. In this study, it was hypothesized that changes in local hemodynamic activity, due to the activation of Broca’s area during overt/covert speech, can be harnessed to create an intuitive Brain Computer Interface based on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS). A 12-channel square template was used to cover inferior frontal gyrus and changes in hemoglobin concentration corresponding to six aloud (overtly) and six silently (covertly) spoken words were collected from eight healthy participants. An unsupervised feature extraction algorithm was implemented with an optimized support vector machine for classification. For all participants, when considering overt and covert classes regardless of words, classification accuracy of 92.88 18.49% was achieved with oxy-hemoglobin (O2Hb) and 95.14 5.39% with deoxy-hemoglobin (HHb) as a chromophore. For a six-active-class problem of overtly spoken words, 88.19 7.12% accuracy was achieved for O2Hb and 78.82 15.76% for HHb. Similarly, for a six-active-class classification of covertly spoken words, 79.17 14.30% accuracy was achieved with O2Hb and 86.81 9.90% with HHb as an absorber. These results indicate that a control paradigm based on covert speech can be reliably implemented into future Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs) based on NIRS

Recent research has shown that chiropractic spinal manipulation can alter central sensorimotor integration and motor cortical drive to human voluntary muscles of the upper and lower limb. The aim of this paper was to explore whether spinal manipulation could also influence maximal bite force. Twenty-eight people were divided into two groups of 14, one that received chiropractic care and one that received sham chiropractic care. All subjects were naive to chiropractic. Maximum bite force was assessed pre- and post-intervention and at 1-week follow up. Bite force in the chiropractic group increased compared to the control group (p = 0.02) post-intervention and this between-group difference was also present at the 1-week follow-up (p < 0.01). Bite force in the chiropractic group increased significantly by 11.0% (+/- 18.6%) post-intervention (p = 0.04) and remained increased by 13.0% (+/- 12.9%, p = 0.04) at the 1 week follow up. Bite force did not change significantly in the control group immediately after the intervention (-2.3 +/- 9.0%, p = 0.20), and decreased by 6.3% (+/- 3.4%, p = 0.01) at the 1-week follow-up. These results indicate that chiropractic spinal manipulation can increase maximal bite force., Koç University; New Zealand College of Chiropractic

This study investigates whether spinal manipulation leads to changes in motor control by measuring the recruitment pattern of motor units in both an upper and lower limb muscle and to see whether such changes may at least in part occur at the cortical level by recording movement related cortical potential (MRCP) amplitudes. In experiment one, transcranial magnetic stimulation input-output (TMS I/O) curves for an upper limb muscle (abductor pollicus brevis; APB) were recorded, along with F waves before and after either spinal manipulation or a control intervention for the same subjects on two different days. During two separate days, lower limb TMS I/O curves and MRCPs were recorded from tibialis anterior muscle (TA) pre and post spinal manipulation. Dependent measures were compared with repeated measures analysis of variance, with p set at 0.05. Spinal manipulation resulted in a 54.5% +/- 93.1% increase in maximum motor evoked potential (MEPmax) for APB and a 44.6% +/- 69.6% increase in MEPmax for TA. For the MRCP data following spinal manipulation there were significant difference for amplitude of early bereitschafts-potential (EBP), late bereitschafts potential (LBP) and also for peak negativity (PN). The results of this study show that spinal manipulation leads to changes in cortical excitability, as measured by significantly larger MEPmax for TMS induced input-output curves for both an upper and lower limb muscle, and with larger amplitudes of MRCP component post manipulation. No changes in spinal measures (i.e., F wave amplitudes or persistence) were observed, and no changes were shown following the control condition. These results are consistent with previous findings that have suggested increases in strength following spinal manipulation were due to descending cortical drive and could not be explained by changes at the level of the spinal cord. Spinal manipulation may therefore be indicated for the patients who have lost tonus of their muscle and/or are recov, Australian Spinal Research Foundation; Hamblin Chiropractic Research Fund Trust; New Zealand College of Chiropractic; Koç University

Objectives. Studies have shown decreases in N30 somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) peak amplitudes following spinal manipulation (SM) of dysfunctional segments in subclinical pain (SCP) populations. This study sought to verify these findings and to investigate underlying brain sources that may be responsible for such changes. Methods. Nineteen SCP volunteers attended two experimental sessions, SM and control in random order. SEPs from 62-channel EEG cap were recorded following median nerve stimulation (1000 stimuli at 2.3 Hz) before and after either intervention. Peak-to-peak amplitude and latency analysis was completedfor different SEPs peak. Dipolar models of underlying brain sources were built by using the brain electrical source analysis. Twoway repeated measures ANOVA was used to assessed differences in N30 amplitudes, dipole locations, and dipole strengths. Results. SM decreased the N30 amplitude by 16.9 ± 31.3% (P = 0.02), while no differences were seen following the control intervention (P = 0.4). Brain source modeling revealed a 4-source model but only the prefrontal source showed reduced activity by 20.2 ± 12.2% (P = 0.03) following SM. Conclusion. A single session of spinal manipulation of dysfunctional segments in subclinical pain patients alters somatosensory processing at the cortical level, particularly within the prefrontal cortex.

This paper presents a novel method for feature extraction from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals using empirical mode decomposition (EMD). Its use is motivated by the fact that the EMD gives an effective time-frequency analysis of nonstationary signals. The intrinsic mode functions (IMF) obtained as a result of EMD give the decomposition of a signal according to its frequency components. We present the usage of upto third order temporal moments, and spectral features including spectral centroid, coefficient of variation and the spectral skew of the IMFs for feature extraction from EEG signals. These features are physiologically relevant given that the normal EEG signals have different temporal and spectral centroids, dispersions and symmetries when compared with the pathological EEG signals. The calculated features are fed into the standard support vector machine (SVM) for classification purposes. The performance of the proposed method is studied on a publicly available dataset which is designed to handle various classification problems including the identification of epilepsy patients and detection of seizures. Experiments show that good classification results are obtained using the proposed methodology for the classification of EEG signals. Our proposed method also compares favorably to other state-of-the-art feature extraction methods.