Effects of observation of hand movements reflected in a mirror on cortical activation in patients with stroke.
Moon-Young Chang, Hwan-Hee Kim, Kyeong-Mi Kim and 3 others
PMID 28210035WHAT IT FOUND
After mirror therapy, EEG responses in stroke patients changed.
Mirror viewing altered alpha and beta activity differently from direct hand viewing. The study did not measure hand function or daily tasks, so it does not show functional recovery.
Key findings
01Relative alpha power was significantly different between direct hand viewing and mirror viewing at F3, F4, O1, and O2.
02Relative beta power was significantly different between direct hand viewing and mirror viewing at F3, F4, C3, and C4.
03After mirror therapy, beta power increased during direct hand viewing and decreased during mirror viewing at F3, F4, and C3.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 14 patients were studied, and all were in a hospital rehabilitation setting. The paper describes a pre- and post-test control-group design, but no randomisation or blinding procedure is reported. Patients were hospitalized, and the environment outside the treatment room was not controlled. Some subjects became bored during mirror observation, and the therapist had to motivate them. The outcomes were EEG alpha and beta power, not hand function or ADL performance.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the EEG changes as proof that mirror therapy improves hand function or daily activities. The study measured alpha and beta brain-wave activity, not task performance, and it did not report a hand function or ADL outcome.