Sensory Integration in Balance Perception in Post-Stroke Individuals
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Odom, Hannah
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Borich, Michael
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Abstract
Stroke leads to somatosensory perceptual deficits that impair whole-body motion (WBM) as well as deficits in overall balance. Literature suggests that impaired perception during WBM may result in decreased overall balance ability, but the underlying neural mechanism between the two is unknown. Investigating the role of cortical sensory processing may help inform a connection between impaired balance and impaired WBM perception after stroke. We hypothesized that reception of sensory information in somatosensory cortex is impaired after stroke, which disrupts balance and WBM perception. We elicited somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) to measure cortical sensory processing and compared between controls and participants with stroke in both sitting and standing conditions. We also conducted tests of perceptual ability and overall balance ability and compared performance in those tasks to latency and amplitude of SEPs. Results showed that latency is delayed on the paretic side of participants with stroke, but not between the left and right side of controls. SEP amplitude was larger on the paretic side than the non-paretic side in participants with stroke but showed no side differences for control. Amplitude of SEPs were larger in sitting than in standing across all conditions and sides. However, delayed and weakened cortical sensory processing did not correlate with impaired overall balance or perceptual abilities, indicating that cortical sensory processing is most likely not the link between the two after stroke.
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Undergraduate Research Option Thesis