Paired Associative Stimulation as a Tool to Assess Plasticity Enhancers in Chronic Stroke.

ABSTRACT:

Background and purpose

The potential for adaptive plasticity in the post-stroke brain is difficult to estimate, as is the demonstration of central nervous system (CNS) target engagement of drugs that show promise in facilitating stroke recovery. We set out to determine if paired associative stimulation (PAS) can be used (a) as an assay of CNS plasticity in patients with chronic stroke, and (b) to demonstrate CNS engagement by memantine, a drug which has potential plasticity-modulating effects for use in motor recovery following stroke.

Methods

We examined the effect of PAS in fourteen participants with chronic hemiparetic stroke at five time-points in a within-subjects repeated measures design study: baseline off-drug, and following a week of orally administered memantine at

SUBMITTER: Silverstein J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6687765 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature