An fNIRS Based Assessment of Cortical Plasticity in Children with Cerebral Palsy Undergoing Robotic-Assisted Gait Training

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a neurologic disorder characterized by non-progressive impairments in movement, spasticity, and deficits in balance and coordination. The utilization of robotic-assisted gait training (RAGT) has become a prevalent method of rehabilitation aimed at improving the gait pattern in individuals with neurological disorders. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of research that has substantiated the efficacy of RAGT in children diagnosed with CP and its impact on neurological functioning, particularly when employing portable neuroimaging methods like functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The objective of this study is to assess the alterations in neuronal functional connectivity induced by RAGT in children diagnosed with CP using fNIRS. The fNIRS data was collected over three sessions in one month. A repeated measure ANOVA was used to examine differences across the sessions of the magnitude-squared wavelet coherence between channels. The post-hoc analysis revealed substantial changes in connectivity throughout the prefrontal and sensorimotor cortex over the RAGT sessions, (Bonferroni corrected). The utilization of this methodology has the potential to customize clinical interventions for individual children, hence enhancing the efficacy of rehabilitation programs for children diagnosed with cerebral palsy.