Natalia Suponeva

Institute of Neurology · Neurorehabilitation Department

Studying rhythmic neural synchronization (cross-frequency coupling in various ranges) is an emerging topic in present-day neurophysiology. One of the best-studied cross-frequency couplings is theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling that contributes to the cognitive function and may vary in patients with several conditions associated with cognitive imp...

Pathological synergies are a frequent consequence of cerebrovascular accidents and hinders further recovery. The existing concept of the formation of pathological synergies considers them as a compensatory strategy in response to damage to the pyramidal tract, which, due to paresis and increased muscle tone, has acquired a pathological character. R...

Metaplasticity (plasticity of synaptic plasticity) is defined as a change in the direction or degree of synaptic plasticity in response to preceding neuronal activity. Recent advances in brain stimulation methods have enabled us to non-invasively examine cortical metaplasticity, including research in a clinical setting. According to current knowled...

The use of metaplasticity-based intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) protocols including several stimulation blocks could be a possible approach to increasing stimulation effectiveness. Our aim was to investigate the neurophysiological effects of two protocols with a short and a long interval between blocks. Seventeen healthy volunteers rece...

Introduction. Rapid advances in critical care medicine have led to an increased survival rate of patients with severe brain damage and, consequently, to an increased prevalence of chronic disorders of consciousness (CDC). The lack of or fluctuations in signs of consciousness, which accompany the restoration of alertness after recovery from coma, in...

Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is a heterogeneous treatable dysimmune neuropathy. The variety of clinical forms and course of the disease can be challenging for proper diagnosis and early treatment. In a quarter of cases CIDP starts acutely, mimicking GuillainBarr syndrome. The early diagnosis is especially important regar...

The detection of signs of consciousness in patients with chronic disorders of consciousness is a complex clinical task. In recent decades, instrumental methods have been used to improve the accuracy of diagnostics. The phenomenon of covert cognition and cognitive-motor dissociation have been demonstrated in a small proportion of patients in studies...

Insight is the sudden unpredictable appearance of a problem’s solution. The solution of anagrams is one of the tasks available for studying insight. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) allows the detection of a causal relationship between the activity of a cerebral cortex area and the studied cognitive phenomenon. During online-rTMS...

Chronic disorders of consciousness (DOC; i.e., vegetative state and minimally consciousness state) develop in patients surviving coma after severe brain damage. Characteristic clinical feature of these syndromes is the dissociation between preserved wakefulness and complete or almost complete absence of awareness. Advanced diagnostic technologies p...

The detection of conscious awareness in patients with disorders of consciousness using behavioral signs is challenging in the presence of sensory, motor, or executive function deficits. Brain signal measurements provide additional information for patient stratification, and the large amounts and multidimentional nature of the obtained data motivate...

The difficulties of behavioral evaluation of prolonged disorders of consciousness (DOC) motivate the development of brain-based diagnostic approaches. The perturbational complexity index (PCI), which measures the complexity of electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), showed a remarkable sensitivity in dete...

Insight is one of the most mysterious problem-solving phenomena involving the sudden emergence of a solution, often preceded by long unproductive attempts to find it. This seemingly unexplainable generation of the answer, together with the role attributed to insight in the advancement of science, technology and culture, stimulate active research in...

Major depression is a common mental disorder predominantly affecting working population and being one of the main causes of the “global burden of disease”. The lack of effectiveness of existing pharmaco􏲤 and psychotherapeutic approaches determines the high relevance of developing and implementing new effective and safe methods of treatment using no...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an intensively developing method of non-invasive brain stimulation. TMS is widely used in cognitive neuroscience to study the causal role of various cortical areas in visual perception, memory, attention, speech, and other cognitive functions. The article discusses the general principles and main direction...

Obesity is a pathological condition caused by overweight and requiring medical intervention. The clinical and scientific experience gained over the past decades has allowed researchers to consider this problem as an independent disease with its own pathophysiological features, prevalence, incidence, approaches to therapy and prevention. One of the...

Spasticity after stroke is a factor that causes disability and restricts activities of daily living, and presents a problem for both doctors and patients’ relatives. At the present time, the Modified Ashworth scale (MAS) is a useful method of assessing increased muscle tone in patients after a cerebrovascular incident. The aim of the work is the li...

It has been proposed that the effectiveness of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) as a cognitive enhancement technique may be enhanced by combining the stimulation with concurrent cognitive activity. However, the benefits of such a combination in comparison to protocols without ongoing cognitive activity have not yet been studied. In the present...

Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) caused by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) provide a possibility of noninvasively mapping cortical muscle representations for clinical and research purposes. The interpretation of such results is complicated by the high variability in MEPs and the lack of a standard optimal mapping protocol. Comparing protocols...

Background Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a promising method for motor recovery in patients with stroke. At present different electrodes montages are used in motor stroke, but their comparative efficacy remains unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate efficacy of different tDCS montages in chronic motor stroke. Materials a...

Background Navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation enables noninvasive mapping of muscle cortical representations for research and clinical purposes. Several mapping protocols are in use, with no consensus regarding the optimal one and insufficient data about their influence on the mapping accuracy. We aimed to determine this influence for prot...

Background The search for biomarkers in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can provide pathophysiological insights and is important for early diagnosis and monitoring of the disease progression. Mapping muscle cortical representations using navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) is a noninvasive method for probing corticospinal excitab...

Background Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is one of the most common causes of chronic neuropathic pain. Chronic pain is currently seen as a result of impaired interaction between different brain structures that provide pain processing. We aimed to assess functional brain abnormalities in TN by an analysis of connectivity using resting-state fMRI. Metho...

Background Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is used in both clinical practice and basic research. The aim of our study was to investigate rTMS tolerability using standardized questionnaires. Materials and methods 69 patients (vascular mild cognitive impairment – 36, recurrent depression – 13, post-stroke pain – 8, trigeminal neu...

Background: Clinical efficacy of rTMS in recurrent depression (RD) is highly variable. It is important to search for approaches improving the efficacy, and choosing the target based on functional connectiv- ity (FC) is promising. We aimed to compare the effects of the stan- dard and FC-based rTMS targeting in RD patients. Methods: 30 pharmacoresist...

Diagnostic accuracy of different chronic disorders of consciousness (DOC) can be affected by the false negative errors in up to 40% cases. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the feasibility of a non-Gaussian diffusion approach in chronic DOC and to estimate a sensitivity of diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) metrics for the differentiation...

Background: Navigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a promising tool for neuromodulation. In previous studies it has been shown that the activity of the default mode network (DMN) areas, particularly of its key region-the angular gyrus-is positively correlated with the level of consciousness. Our study aimed to explore the...

Navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) mapping of cortical muscle representations allows noninvasive assessment of the state of a healthy or diseased motor system, and monitoring changes over time. These applications are hampered by the heterogeneity of existing mapping algorithms and the lack of detailed information about their accurac...

Navigated TMS mapping of cortical muscle representations allows noninvasive assessment of the state of a healthy or diseased motor system and monitoring its change with time. These applications are hampered by the heterogeneity of existing mapping algorithms and the lack of detailed information about their accuracy. We aimed to find an optimal moto...

Introduction: The aim of the study was to develop and validate a Russian adaptation of the Coma Recovery Scale–Revised (CRS-R). Subjects and methods: We evaluated 58 patients with chronic disorders of consciousness (> 4 weeks post-injury, DOC) of various etiology and two patients in a locked-in state at different stages after coma. We tested sensit...

Background The spasticity phenomenon is a significant factor in the development of disability. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a promising treatment method for this disorder. Aims Our aim was to compare the effects of two protocols of rTMS ‐ the high‐frequency (HF) rTMS (20 Hz) and the intermittent theta‐burst stimulation (i...

Differential diagnosis of unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) is one of the most challenging problems for specialists who deal with chronic disorders of consciousness (DOC). The aim of the current study was to develop a conventional MRI-based scale and to evaluate its role in distinguishing chronic disorders...

Introduction There is an unmet need in effective neurorehabilitation methods in chronic disorders of consciousness (DOC). Non-invasive brain stimulation, such as navigated rTMS, is a perspective tool for modulation of the cerebral networks activity in such patients, and resting FMRI, that allows estimating the neural networks activation and interac...

Introduction Mechanisms of goal oriented movements in human arm are not clearly understood. Cortex reorganization after motor learning is of special interest. nTMS is widely used in the field of research related to mechanisms of movement on the cortical level. Mental practice with motor imagery (MI) paradigm is noted for its ability to activate mot...

Introduction Motor imagery (MI) has been shown to be an effective tool in rehabilitation of post-stroke patients. MI can be enhanced by kinesthetic feedback provided by brain-computer-exoskeleton interfaces. Description and analysis of brain activity during the kinesthetic imagery of movements in healthy subjects and post-stroke patients with the s...

Understanding the neuronal basis of disorders of consciousness can help improve the accuracy of their diagnosis, indicate potential targets for therapeutic interventions, and provide insights into the organization of normal conscious information processing. Measurements of brain activity have been used to find associations of the levels of consciou...

Introduction : The aim of the present study was to validate a Russian adaptation of the Coma Recovery Scale–Revised (CRS-R). Subjects and methods : We evaluated 58 patients diagnosed with chronic disorders of consciousness (>4 weeks post-injury, DOC) of various etiology and two patients in a locked-in state at different time points in their post-co...

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test the effects of navigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, delivered in different modes, on motor impairments and functional limitations after stroke. Methods: The study sample included 42 patients (58.5 ± 10.7 years; 26 males) who experienced a single unilateral stroke (1-12 months prev...

Objectives Motor mapping with navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) is widespread technique that is used both in the preoperative planning and as a sign of neuroplasticity changes. But there is no generally accepted mapping protocol. The aim of our study was to estimate the relation between mapping parameters accuracy and the number of...

Introduction Writer’s cramp (WC) is a rare type of focal dystonia. The treatment of WC is complicated due to the variations in the forces and angles of involved joints. Abnormal interactions within motor system units such as primary motor cortex, premotor cortex, basal ganglia is found to play role in WC pathogenesis. Repetitive transcranial magnet...

Introduction Despite the quasi high effectiveness of the repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) in treatment of major depression, the high effect size variability is noticed (Herbsman et al., 2009). One of the reasons for this variability is the imperfect targeting of stimulation point. R...

Introduction Navigated TMS combines magnetic stimulation and neuronavigation and can be used to motor cortex mapping. Objectives To investigate motor cortex maps reorganization in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) using navigated TMS. Patients & methods The study involved 11 right-handed ALS patients and 9 healthy. Navigated TMS (NBS eXimia Nex...

Introduction: Spasticity is associated with various diseases of the nervous system. Current treatments such as drug therapy, botulinum toxin injections, kinesitherapy, and physiotherapy are not sufficiently effective in a large number of patients. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be considered as an alternative method of treatment. The...

Neuronal hyperexcitability is a well-known phenomenon in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. The use of transcranial magnetic stimulation in clinical and research practice has recently made it possible to detect motor cortex hyperexcitability under clinical conditions. Despite numerous studies, the mechanisms and seq...

The number of bariatric (weight loss) surgeries have increased steadily in the past decade. Along with the tangible benefit of this treatment, there is a risk for postoperative complications, the main cause of which is impaired absorption of nutrients. The paper describes polyradiculoneuropathy running as a type of Guillain-Barré syndrome.

The mechanisms underlying the locomotion recovery in poststroke patients remain unknown. Navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) is a new method to evaluate the functional state of the motor system. Using of the exoskeleton complex (EC) allow to correct walking pattern significantly. The aim of this study was to evaluate the capability o...