Randomized controlled trial of postoperative exercise rehabilitation program after lumbar spine fusion: study protocol

Abstract Background Lumbar spine fusion (LSF) effectively decreases pain and disability in specific spinal disorders; however, the disability rate following surgery remains high. This, combined with the fact that in Western countries the number of LSF surgeries is increasing rapidly it is important to develop rehabilitation interventions that improve outcomes. Methods/design In the present RCT-study we aim to assess the effectiveness of a combined back-specific and aerobic exercise intervention for patients after LSF surgery. One hundred patients will be randomly allocated to a 12-month exercise intervention arm or a usual care arm. The exercise intervention will start three months after surgery and consist of six individual guidance sessions with a physiotherapist and a home-based exercise program. The primary outcome measures are low back pain, lower extremity pain, disability and quality of life. Secondary outcomes are back function and kinesiophobia. Exercise adherence will also be evaluated. The outcome measurements will be assessed at baseline (3 months postoperatively), at the end of the exercise intervention period (15 months postoperatively), and after a 1-year follow-up. Discussion The present RCT will evaluate the effectiveness of a long-term rehabilitation program after LSF. To our knowledge this will be the first study to evaluate a combination of strength training, control of the neutral lumbar spine position and aerobic training principles in rehabilitation after LSF. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT00834015peerReviewe

Adaptation of neuromagnetic N1 responses to phonetic stimuli by visual speech in humans.

The technique of 306-channel magnetoencephalogaphy (MEG) was used in eight healthy volunteers to test whether silent lip-reading modulates auditory-cortex processing of phonetic sounds. Auditory test stimuli (either Finnish vowel /ae/ or /ø/) were preceded by a 500 ms lag by either another auditory stimulus (/ae/, /ø/ or the second-formant midpoint between /ae/ and /ø/), or silent movie of a person articulating /ae/ or /ø/. Compared with N1 responses to auditory /ae/ and /ø/ when presented without a preceding stimulus, the amplitudes of left-hemisphere N1 responses to the test stimuli were significantly suppressed both when preceded by auditory and visual stimuli, this effect being significantly stronger with preceding auditory stimuli. This suggests that seeing articulatory gestures of a speaker influences auditory speech perception by modulating the responsiveness of auditory-cortex neurons

Notes on Explicit Block Diagonalization

Abstract In these expository notes we present a unified approach to explicit block diagonalization of the commutant of the symmetric group action on the Boolean algebra and of the nonbinary and q-analogs of this commutant

The origin and migration of cortical neurones: new vistas

The principal neuronal types of the cerebral cortex are the excitatory pyramidal cells, which project to distant targets, and the inhibitory nonpyramidal cells, which are the cortical interneurones. This article reviews evidence suggesting that these two neuronal types are generated in distinct proliferative zones. Pyramidal cells are derived from the neuroepithelium in the cortical ventricular zone, and use the processes of radial glia in order to migrate and take their positions in the cortex in an 'inside-out' sequence. Relatively few nonpyramidal cells are generated in the cortical neuroepithelium: the majority is derived from the ganglionic eminence of the ventral telencephalon. These nonpyramidal neurones use tangential migratory paths to reach the cortex, probably travelling along axonal bundles of the developing corticofugal fibre system