Abstract
To investigate the difference of activated brain areas during a resistive sustained contraction for pelvic anterior elevation (SCAE) using proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) as diagonal upward direction versus a resistive sustained contraction for pelvic elevation (SCE) as upward direction.Eighteen healthy right-handed subjects were asked to exercise in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Region of interest (ROI) analyses were conducted in both sensorimotor areas, cerebellum, basal ganglia, thalamus, brainstem, and the supplementary motor area (SMA), in order to compare the percentage signal change during SCAE versus SCE. SCAE showed activation in all regions analyzed in this study. SCE also showed activation in many regions except in both thalamus, both brainstem, and right SMA. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was repeated for each ROI on the % change of activation for the SCAE and SCE conditions. Regions of interest showed a significant interaction between condition and % change of activation. Repeated ANOVA revealed that right cerebellum showed significant increase during SCAE and left SMA showed increase during SCE. There was direction-dependent activation during pelvic exercise. In the present right-handed subjects, the bilateral SMA activation with SCAE showed a larger change of signal intensity in the right hemisphere, and was nearly symmetrical compared with SCE. The increase activations in the right cerebellum, brainstem, and SMA induced by SCAE may be related with the rotated position of the trunk as well as the upper extremity.
