Frequency Domain Analysis of EMG and HRV in Self-Support Exercise

We have observed that the self-support exercises triggered electromyographic activities on the dormant muscles of the post-stroke patients. Self-support exercise here implies that the patients move their paretic arms with the supports of their non-paretic arms. The similarity of the muscle activities between the paretic and the non-paretic arms show that the motor paralysis is improved during the self-support exercises. We have showed through the clinical tests that biofeedback rehabilitation using this self-support exercises can improve the recovery speed from the motion paralysis. In this paper, we report that EMG frequency and heart rate variability during self-support exercises became smaller than those during bimanual exercises, suggesting that parasympathetic nerve system in the self-support exercise became more active than in bimanual exercise. Instead the causality between the motor paralysis improvement and the changes of the autonomous nerve states is unclear, these results is the evidence that the neural pathways that was used before stroke are used in the self-support exercise though abnormal pathways are used in the bimanual exercises.