Immediate Plasticity of Parietal-Frontocentral Functional Connections in Music-Reality based Post-Stroke Rehabilitation

Post-stroke neuronal plasticity was always viewed as a localized gain-of-functionality. The reorganization of neurons neighboring the lesioned brain tissues is able to compensate for the function of damaged neurons. However, it was also proposed that distant interconnected brain regions could be affected by stroke. Changes in functional connections across the brain were found associated with motor deficiency and recovery. Parietal-frontocentral functional connectivity was found related to the performance of motor imagery. This study aims to evaluate the EEG-based parietal-frontocentral functional connectivity in post-stroke patients, and to investigate the immediate effect of rehabilitation training toward these connections. Pairwise functional connectivity was extracted from healthy subjects and post-stroke patients during standing and walking. Significant reductions in P3-FC4 and P3-C4 connectivity strengths were found in post-stroke patients during both standing and walking conditions. Immediate improvement in the reduced connections was observed with the intervention of a previously proposed, motivation-based rehabilitation system, which was known as the mixed-reality music rehabilitation (MR
²
) system. This indicates the relationship between left parietal functional connectivity and stroke-related motor performance. These findings suggest the feasibility to evaluate the immediate plasticity of functional connectivity during post-stroke rehabilitation.