Ativação do córtex motor com uso de jogo sério em adolescentes com paralisia cerebral hemiparética

Abstract

Children diagnosed with hemiparetic cerebral palsy are characterized by pronounced motor deficits on one side of the body, often accompanied by perceptual, cognitive, communicative and behavioral disorders. As a way to analyze the brain activity of this population during a motor and cognitive activity, this study aim to compare the electroencephalographic signs of children with typical development and children diagnosed with hemiparetic cerebral palsy (left and right) during the execution of a voluntary movement, with and without the use of a motivational game. We evaluated 40 children (20 with hemiparetic cerebral palsy and 20 with typical development) of both genders and with ages ranging from 6 to 12 years of age. The data collection consisted of two steps: (1) Acquisition of electroencephalographic signals and capture of the three-dimensional trajectory of the movements during the execution of a reach motor task (first study); (2) Acquisition of the electroencephalographic signals and capture of the three-dimensional trajectory of the movements during the execution of a motor task of reach motivated by a game (second study). Kinematic data were extracted from the trajectory of the movements and from these were extracted the execution times of each phase of the movement, the exact moment the volunteer started the task, and the intervals of analysis of the brain activity were defined. Electroencephalographic data were processed in order to obtain information about the synchronizations and desynchronizations related to the event of the mu and beta waves, spectral perturbations related to the event and the cortical reorganization for each of the studies. Subsequently the data were analyzed statistically through the Unidirectional ANOVA Test, using the Bootsrap resampling method. The results of this study revealed significant differences between the analyzed groups, mainly for the cerebral behavior observed during the movement performed in the two studies. However, it was observed that for most children with cerebral palsy there were no significant differences between the data obtained at the time of motor planning, especially for the second study. It is believed that this is one of the main factors for motor impairment and oscillatory brain behavior during the development of activities with non-paretic and paretic limbs.