Open Collections

Benam, Niloufar

University of British Columbia

Background: Activities of daily living (ADLs), such as dressing, and toileting, are an important part of everyday life. The ability to complete ADLs can promote feelings of well-being and is important for having a sense of independence. Dressing is an ADL that is completed on a daily basis. However, there is currently limited knowledge on brain activity during dressing tasks. Previous studies explored brain activity during dressing using fMRI. However, there are limitations with fMRI in that participants have to retain a supine position during neuroimaging which is not a natural position when a person is dressing. A promising technology, functional near-infra red spectroscopy (fNIRS), can investigate brain activity during a dressing task of buttoning in a more natural state. Purpose: The studies involved in this thesis aim to use fNIRS to: (1) investigate brain activity during buttoning in healthy adults; and (2) explore brain activation patterns in individuals who have sustained a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) while completing a buttoning task. Methods: Participants in both studies completed a task of buttoning in three 20 second repetitions with 15 seconds rest in between each activity time block. Brain activation patterns were recorded using fNIRS over the prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, sensorimotor cortex, and posterior parietal cortex. Results: There were twenty healthy participants recruited from the community for study 1. Study 2 involved two participants with severe TBI. Significantly higher activation in the prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, and sensorimotor cortex was observed for healthy control participants during the activity block when compared to the resting state. In study 2, brain activity in both TBI participants showed decreased activity within the premotor cortex and supplementary motor area and increased brain activity within the posterior parietal cortex during task performance compared to rest condition. Conclusions: Understanding brain activity during performance of activities of daily living in healthy adults is a critical first-step for investigating brain activation in different clinical populations such as TBI.  

Text

2023-12-06

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86771

Rehabilitation Sciences

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/