Authors: H Bendella S P Pavlov M Grosheva A Irintchev S K Angelova D Merkel N Sinis K Kaidoglou E Skouras S A Dunlop Doychin N Angelov
Publish Date: 2011/04/28
Volume: 212, Issue: 1, Pages: 65-79
Abstract
We have recently shown that manual stimulation of target muscles promotes functional recovery after transection and surgical repair to pure motor nerves facial whisking and blink reflex hypoglossal tongue position However following facial nerve repair manual stimulation is detrimental if sensory afferent input is eliminated by eg infraorbital nerve extirpation To further understand the interplay between sensory input and motor recovery we performed simultaneous cutandsuture lesions on both the facial and the infraorbital nerves and examined whether stimulation of the sensory afferents from the vibrissae by a forced use would improve motor recovery The efficacy of 3 treatment paradigms was assessed removal of the contralateral vibrissae to ensure a maximal use of the ipsilateral ones vibrissal stimulation Group 2 manual stimulation of the ipsilateral vibrissal muscles Group 3 and vibrissal stimulation followed by manual stimulation Group 4 Data were compared to controls which underwent surgery but did not receive any treatment Group 1 Four months after surgery all three treatments significantly improved the amplitude of vibrissal whisking to 30° versus 11° in the controls of Group 1 The three treatments also reduced the degree of polyneuronal innervation of target muscle fibers to 37 versus 58 in Group 1 These findings indicate that forced vibrissal use and manual stimulation either alone or sequentially reduce target muscle polyinnervation and improve recovery of whisking function when both the sensory and the motor components of the trigeminofacial system regenerateThis study was financially supported by the Federal Office of Education and Science in Germany Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung NS the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft AN 331/2 AN 331/5 the KölnFortune Forschungsprogramm ES the Programm for Academic Cooperation between the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Cologne KK and the JeanUhrmacher Foundation MG SKA SAD is a recipient of a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Senior Research Fellowship ID 254670
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