
Harri PiitulainenUniversity of Jyväskylä | JYU · Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences
Harri Piitulainen
Ph.D. in Biomechanics; Docent (Adjunct Prof.) in Motor Control
About
87
Publications
12,755
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Introduction
Research interests:
Function and adaptation of human motor control | Cortical sensorimotor mapping | Connection between cortical activity and distal motor action | Cortico-muscular coherence and cortico-kinetic coherence and their clinical applications | Motor mirror neuron system | Muscle mechanics and physiology | Development and application of high-density/multichannel surface electromyography (sEMG) | Magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Additional affiliations
Education
September 2008 - May 2009
University of Jyväskylä, Department of Education
Field of study
- Pedagogical studies for teachers
March 2006 - September 2010
University of Jyväskylä, Department of Biology of Physical Activity
Field of study
- Biomechanics
September 2001 - January 2006
University of Jyväskylä, Department of Biology of Physical Activity
Field of study
- Biomechanics
Publications
Publications (87)
Despite the progress in the development of innovative EEG acquisition systems, their use in dynamic applications is still limited by motion artifacts compromising the interpretation of the collected signals. Therefore, extensive research on the genesis of motion artifacts in EEG recordings is still needed to optimize existing technologies, shedding...
Proprioception refers to the ability to perceive the position and movement of body segments in space. The cortical aspects of the proprioceptive afference from the body can be investigated using corticokinematic coherence (CKC). CKC accurately quantifies the degree of coupling between cortical activity and limb kinematics, especially if precise pro...
Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common motor disorder in childhood. Recent studies in children with CP have associated weakened sensorimotor performance with impairments in the major brain white-matter (WM) structure, corpus callosum (CC). However, the relationship between CC structure and lower extremity performance, specifically gait and balance,...
Thalamocortical pathways are considered crucial in the sensorimotor functioning of children with cerebral palsy (CP). However, previous research has been limited by non-specific tractography seeding and the lack of comparison between different CP subtypes. We compared limb-specific thalamocortical tracts between children with hemiplegic (HP, N = 15...
Purpose:
Numerous exercise interventions to enhance motor function in cerebral palsy (CP) have been proposed, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Since motor function requires a combination of muscle strength, joint flexibility and motor coordination, we designed a supervised multicomponent exercise intervention (EXECP) for individuals with CP....
Proprioception is the sense of body position and movement that relies on afference from the proprioceptors in muscles and joints. Proprioceptive responses in the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex can be elicited by stimulating the proprioceptors using evoked (passive) limb movements. In magnetoencephalography (MEG), proprioceptive processing can be...
Hyper-resistance is an increased resistance to passive muscle stretch, a common feature in neurological disorders. Stretch hyperreflexia, an exaggerated stretch reflex response, is the neural velocity-dependent component of hyper-resistance, and has been quantitatively measured using the stretch reflex threshold (i.e., joint angle at the stretch re...
Controlled assessment of functional cortical networks is an unmet need in the clinical research of noncooperative subjects, such as infants. We developed an automated, pneumatic stimulation method to actuate naturalistic movements of an infant’s hand, as well as an analysis pipeline for assessing the elicited electroencephalography (EEG) responses...
Cortical processing of proprioceptive afference can be investigated by examining phase locked evoked and induced responses in cortical signals to passive movement stimuli. Reproducibility of evoked and induced responses has been studied using electroencephalography (EEG), but proprioceptive domain has received little attention. It is unclear whethe...
Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) quantifies the phase coupling between limb kinematics and cortical neurophysiological signals reflecting proprioceptive feedback to the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex. We studied whether the CKC strength or cortical source location differs between proprioceptive stimulation (i.e., actuator-evoked movements) of ri...
Sensory feedback is a critical component in many human-machine interfaces (e.g., bionic limbs) to provide missing sensations. Specifically, electrotactile stimulation is a popular feedback modality able to evoke configurable sensations by modulating pulse amplitude, duration, and frequency of the applied stimuli. However, these sensations coded by...
Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) is computed between limb kinematics and cortical activity (e.g. MEG, EEG), and it can be used to detect, quantify and localize the cortical processing of proprioceptive afference arising from the body. EEG-based studies on CKC have been limited to lab environments due to bulky, non-portable instrumentations. We rece...
As humans, we seamlessly hold objects in our hands, and may even lose consciousness of these objects. This phenomenon raises the unsettled question of the involvement of the cerebral cortex, the core area for voluntary motor control, in dynamically maintaining steady muscle force. To address this issue, we measured magnetoencephalographic brain act...
Individuals at risk of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) have low levels of physical activity in childhood due to impaired motor competence, however physical activity levels in adulthood have not been established. This study sought to determine the impact of DCD risk on physical activity levels in adults using accelerometry measurement. Par...
Healthy people can walk nearly effortlessly thanks to their instinctively adaptive gait patterns that tend to minimize metabolic energy consumption. However, the economy of gait is severely impaired in many neurological disorders such as stroke or cerebral palsy (CP). Moreover, self-selected asymmetry of impaired gait does not seem to unequivocally...
The Rolandic beta rhythm, at ∼20 Hz, is generated in the somatosensory and motor cortices and is modulated by motor activity and sensory stimuli, causing a short lasting suppression that is followed by a rebound of the beta rhythm. The rebound reflects inhibitory changes in the primary sensorimotor (SMI) cortex, and thus it has been used as a bioma...
Studying white matter connections with tractography is a promising approach to understand the development of different brain processes, such as proprioception. An emerging method is to use functional brain imaging to select the cortical seed points for tractography, which is considered to improve the functional relevance and validity of the studied...
Sensorimotor integration is the process through which the human brain plans the motor program execution according to external sources. Within this context, corticomuscular and corticokinematic coherence analyses are common methods to investigate the mechanism underlying the central control of muscle activation. This requires the synchronous acquisi...
As humans, we seamlessly hold objects in our hands, and may even lose consciousness of these objects. This phenomenon raises the unsettled question of the involvement of the cerebral cortex, the core area for voluntary motor control, in dynamically maintaining steady muscle force. To address this issue, we measured magnetoencephalographic brain act...
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a motor disorder where the motor defects are partly due to impaired proprioception. We studied cortical proprioceptive responses and sensorimotor performance in adolescents with CP and their typically-developed (TD) peers. Passive joint movements were used to stimulate proprioceptors during functional magnetic resonance imagi...
Proprioceptive afference can be investigated using corticokinematic coherence (CKC), which indicates coupling between limb kinematics and cortical activity. CKC has been quantified using proprioceptive stimulation (movement actuators) with fixed inter-stimulus interval (ISI). However, it is unclear how regularity of the stimulus sequence (jitter) a...
Beta rhythm modulation has been used as a biomarker to reflect the functional state of the sensorimotor cortex in both healthy subjects and patients. Here, the effect of reduced alertness and active attention to the stimulus on beta rhythm modulation was investigated. Beta rhythm modulation to tactile stimulation of the index finger was recorded si...
Movement‐evoked fields to passive movements and corticokinematic coherence between limb kinematics and magnetoencephalographic signals can both be used to quantify the degree of cortical processing of proprioceptive afference. We examined in 20 young healthy volunteers whether processing of proprioceptive afference in the primary sensorimotor corte...
Background
Individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) have problems in everyday tasks such as walking and climbing stairs due to a combination of neuromuscular impairments such as spasticity, muscle weakness, reduced joint flexibility and poor coordination. Development of evidence-based interventions are in pivotal role in the development of better targe...
Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) quantifies the phase coupling between limb kinematics and cortical neurophysiological signals reflecting proprioceptive feedback to the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex. We studied CKC to proprioceptive stimulation (i.e. movement-actuator-evoked movements) of right-hand digits (index, middle, ring and little) perfo...
There is limited evidence about gait stability and its alteration by concurrent motor and cognitive tasks in children with cerebral palsy (CP). We examined gait stability and how it is altered by constrained cognitive or motor task in CP and their typically developed (TD) controls.
Gait kinematics were recorded using inertial-measurement units (IMU...
Proprioceptive paired-stimulus paradigm was used for 30 children (10-17 years) and 21 adult (25-45 years) volunteers in magnetoencephalography (MEG). Their right index finger was moved twice with 500-ms interval every 4 ± 25 s (repeated 100 times) using a pneumatic-movement actuator. Spatial-independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to ident...
In this article, we present the clinical indications and advances in the use of magnetoencephalography to map the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex in neurosurgical patients noninvasively. We emphasize the advantages of magnetoencephalography over sensorimotor mapping using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Recommendations to the referring phy...
Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) is the phase coupling between limb kinematics and cortical neurophysiological signals reflecting cortical processing of proprioceptive afference, and is reproducible when estimated with magnetoencephalography (MEG). However, feasibility and reproducibility of CKC based on electroencephalography (EEG) is still unclea...
Healthy aging is associated with deterioration of the sensorimotor system, which impairs balance and somatosensation. However, the exact age-related changes in the cortical processing of sensorimotor integration are unclear. This study investigated primary sensorimotor cortex (SM1) oscillations in the 15–30 Hz beta band at rest and following (invol...
Modulation of the ∼20-Hz brain rhythm has been used to evaluate the functional state of the sensorimotor cortex both in healthy subjects and patients, such as stroke patients. The ∼20-Hz brain rhythm can be detected by both magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG), but the comparability of these methods has not been evaluated....
New findings:
What is the central question of this study? Can a 14-week strength-training program modify intermuscular coherence levels during bipedal standing tasks with eyes open and eyes closed and reduce age-related differences? What is the main finding and its importance? Older adults had more prominent common input over 4-14 Hz with eyes ope...
Motor symptoms are defining traits in the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD). A crucial component in motor function is the integration of afferent proprioceptive sensory feedback. Previous studies have indicated abnormal movement-related cortical oscillatory activity in PD, but the role of the proprioceptive afference on abnormal oscillatory act...
Aging is associated with reduced maximum force production and force steadiness during low-force tasks, but both can be improved by training. Intermuscular coherence measures coupling between two peripheral surface electromyography (EMG) signals in the frequency domain. It is thought to represent the presence of common input to alpha-motoneurons, bu...
For vision, audition and tactile sense, the optimal stimulus frequency for fMRI is somewhat known. For proprioception, i.e., the “movement sense”, however, the optimal frequency is unknown. We studied the effect of passive-finger-movement frequency on proprioceptive fMRI responses using a novel pneumatic-movement actuator. Eleven healthy right-hand...
Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have gait impairments, and their gait is affected by concurrent tasks. We used inertial measurement units (IMU) to quantify CP-related gait complexity alterations, and identify effects of dual tasks on gait variability from 12 children with CP and 23 typically developed (TD) controls. The data were collected for no...
Static postural sway can be quantified as variation in body's center of force (COF) position across time using a plantar pressure plate. We aimed to compare capability of three clinically feasible bipedal tasks to extract the contribution of proprioception to postural stability. We measured the postural sway of 24 healthy volunteers (age range 10.2...
Proprioceptive perception is impaired with aging, but little is known about aging-related deterioration of proprioception at the cortical level. Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) between limb kinematic and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals reflects cortical processing of proprioceptive afference. We, thus, compared CKC strength to ankle movement...
Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) between limb kinematics and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals reflects cortical processing of proprioceptive afference. However, it is unclear whether strength of CKC is reproducible across measurement sessions. We thus examined reproducibility of CKC in a follow-up study.
Thirteen healthy right-handed volunteer...
Motor symptoms are defining traits in the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD). A crucial component in motor function and control of movements is the integration of efferent signals from the motor network to the peripheral motor system, and afferent proprioceptive sensory feedback. Previous studies have indicated abnormal movement-related cortical...
To gain fundamental knowledge on how the brain controls motor actions, we studied in detail the interplay between MEG signals from the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex and the contraction force of 17 healthy adult humans (7 females, 10 males). SM1 activity was coherent at ~20 Hz with surface electromyogram (as already extensively reported) but als...
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) related neuromuscular adaptations, changes in force production and on-ice performance were investigated in female ice-hockey players during pre-season. Fourteen Finnish championship level ice hockey players (average age 22 ± 3 years) participated in 2½-week HIIT. Both spinal (H-reflex) and supraspinal (V-wave...
Background:
Stroke is a major cause of disability worldwide, and effective rehabilitation is crucial to regain skills for independent living. Recently, novel therapeutic approaches manipulating the excitatory-inhibitory balance of the motor cortex have been introduced to boost recovery after stroke. However, stroke-induced neurophysiological chang...
Objective:
Somatosensory evoked potentials have high prognostic value in neonatal intensive care, but their recording from infants is challenging. Here, we studied the possibility to elicit cortical responses in newborns by simple passive hand movements.
Methods:
We examined 13 newborns (postnatal age 1-46days) during clinically indicated 19-cha...
Shortening of the interstimulus interval (ISI) generally leads to attenuation of cortical sensory responses. For proprioception, however, this ISI effect is still poorly known. Our aim was to characterize the ISI dependence of movement-evoked proprioceptive cortical responses and to find the optimum ISI for proprioceptive stimulation. We measured,...
To maintain steady motor output, distracting sensory stimuli need to be blocked. To study the effects of brief auditory and visual distractors on the human primary motor (M1) cortex, we monitored magnetoencephalographic (MEG) cortical rhythms, electromyogram (EMG) of finger flexors, and corticomuscular coherence (CMC) during right-hand pinch (force...
Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) is the coupling between magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals and limb kinematics during fast movements. Our objective was to assess the robustness of CKC-based identification of the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex of subjects producing strong magnetic artifacts when the MEG signals were cleaned with temporal sign...
Human leg muscles are often activated inhomogeneously, e.g. in standing. This may also occur in complex tasks like walking. Thus, bipolar surface electromyography (sEMG) may not accurately represent whole muscle activity. This study used 64-electrode high-density sEMG (HD-sEMG) to examine spatial variability of lateral gastrocnemius (LG) muscle act...
This review discusses the critical issues and recommended practices from the perspective of myoelectric interfaces. The major benefits and challenges of myoelectric interfaces are evaluated. The article aims to fill gaps left by previous reviews and identify avenues for future research. Recommendations are given, for example, for electrode placemen...
Kinematics of both active and passive finger movements is coherent with magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals recorded from the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex. The coherence mainly reflects movement-related proprioceptive afference to the cortex. Here we describe a novel MEG-compatible stimulator to generate computer-controlled passive finger an...
Corticokinematic coherence (CKC) reflects coupling between magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals and hand kinematics, mainly occurring at hand movement frequency (F0) and its first harmonic (F1). Since CKC can be obtained for both active and passive movements, it has been suggested to mainly reflect proprioceptive feedback to the primary sensorimot...