Question:

Improvements in patients presenting with postural ataxia after whole body stimulation have been reported by physiotherapists. The aim of the current study was to quantify muscle activity during a rehabilitation program consisting of a whole body stimulation driven by a moving force platform.

Methodology:

Eleven cerebellar patients (CBL) and 11 healthy subjects (CTRL) were tested in a 3-h-rehabilitation program. As a part of this test patients/subjects were standing on a force platform subjected to fronto-dorsal sinusoidal movement stimulations lasting for 3 min representing 30 trials. The single sinusoidal movement consisted of 5 cycles of constant amplitude (8 deg) with a logarithmically increasing and decreasing frequency (range: 0.6-3.5 Hz). During these movements the postural induced activities of the main leg muscle groups were recorded.

Results:

Analysis of the muscle activity indicated that the distal leg muscles were involved primarily in the compensation of the platform induced perturbation with the gastrocnemius muscle showing more consistent responses than the tibial muscle. CBL responded less adequately than CTRL to increasing frequencies. There were clear differences in the time courses between individual muscles responses and the corresponding simulation function. Cross-correlations between these measurement units indicated that the preponderant part of the muscle responses in CBL lagged behind the stimulus function, whereas in CTRL the opposite was observed. Scatter plots showing the magnitudes of individual correlation coefficient and the lead-lag times did not provide evidence for larger correlation coefficients in CTRL compared to CBL, although there was a tendency in CBL with reducing the lag times in later repetitions.

Conclusions:

These results suggest that simple physical treatment by sinusoidal body movements may temporarily reduce postural-based ataxia in CBL.

Supported by Else-Kröner-Fresenius Stiftung (A12/07)