Grant: Project Grant

Recovery from stroke is most often incomplete and requires large amounts of practice that are expensive and often not feasible. Because of this it is important to develop new ways to speed learning after stroke. One approach that is promising is to prepare or "prime" the brain for learning by pairing exercise with skilled practice of movement tasks. Past work showed that pairing single sessions of exercise with skilled motor practice enhances learning. Our work demonstrated that the short bout of exercise primes or prepares the brain for learning by lessening inhibition which then facilitates brain plasticity. However this intervention has only been tested in healthy controls. Further, at this time we have only tested single sessions that pair a short bout of priming exercise with skilled practice. As such we do not know what the effect of multiple sessions that pair priming exercise with skilled practice would be on motor learning. The present study is designed to test the effects of priming exercise on motor learning as an intervention that is designed to enhance motor learning after stroke. This is important as such an intervention could be used to enhance the effects of rehabilitation after stroke. In total we will test two main aims: 1)We will determine if the effect of priming exercise is to lessen inhibition in the brain after stroke. 2)We will deliver repeated sessions of priming exercise paired with skilled motor practice to see if compared to a group who rests before motor practice, the exercise group shows greater learning. Our data will illustrate a new way by which learning could be enhanced after stroke. Exercise could easily be incorporated into rehabilitation settings. As such our findings can be rapidly translated to the clinical setting to promote the recovery of Canadians with stroke.