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Sir, There has been a growing interest in the role of the cerebellum in primary dystonia. Although this role is not yet fully understood (Sadnicka et al., 2012), an elegant paper by Hubsch et al. (2013) in Brain showed that in writer’s cramp, a form of task-specific primary hand dystonia, the cerebellum has lost its ability to modulate sensorimotor plasticity of the motor cortex. As part of the...

the patient’s story, and enjoy the interaction with patients and families. They are also part of the full gamut of life experiences and events, often in dramatic fashion. Smithers noted that “opportunities for the close observation of the great variety of men and women under conditions of stress, suffering, relief and bereavement has been theirs; indeed they have seen more of the triumph of the...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to investigate the properties of the corticomotor pathway and to map the primary motor cortex projection to hand and forearm muscles during a sustained isometric contraction in a group of subjects with writer's cramp of varying duration. Corticomotor threshold, motor evoked potential amplitude and latency, and silent-period duration were normal on both...

Anecdotal evidence supports the use of Bacrobial skin cleanser for preventing muscle cramps; however, empirical evidence is lacking. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether Bacrobial prevents muscle cramping in the triceps surae. DESIGN: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. SETTINGS/LOCATION: Laboratory. SUBJECTS: Seventeen cramp-prone participants (11 male, 6 female; age 21 ± 2...

Low-frequency median nerve stimulation, paired with suprathreshold transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the optimal site for activation of the abductor pollicis brevis (APB) muscle induces a long-lasting increase in the excitability of corticospinal output neurons, if median nerve stimulation is given 25 ms before TMS. Here we employed this protocol of stimulation to assess associative ...

Focal dystonias are the most common type of isolated dystonia. Although their causative pathophysiology remains unclear, it is thought to involve abnormal functioning of the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuitry. We used high-resolution research tomography with the radioligand C-NNC-112 to examine striatal dopamine D1 receptor function in two independent groups of patients, writer’s cramp an...

INTRODUCTION Focal dystonia in musicians, also known as musician's cramp, is a task-specific movement disorder which presents itself as a painless muscular incoordina-ABSTRACT Background: Musician's dystonia is a task-spe

33 We analyzed individual motor units during electrically-elicited cramp contractions with 34 the aim of characterizing the variability and degree of common oscillations in their discharges. 35 Intramuscular and surface EMG signals were detected from the abductor hallucis muscle of 11 36 healthy subjects (age 27.0 ± 3.7 yrs) during electrically-elicited cramps. In total, 48 motor units 37 were ...