• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.13-23
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• 2013

Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy(CIMT) is considered as one of the most interesting upper extremity rehabilitation in the field of neurorehabilitation. CIMT is an intensive training provided in the affected upper limb for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for 2 weeks, while unaffected arm is restrained for 90% of waking hours. Recently, instead of CIMT, modified Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy(mCIMT) has been applied because of the clinical limitations of CIMT. CIMT or mCIMT studies have used various outcome instruments to measure different aspects of upper limb function after intervention. There are various kinds of evaluation tools to measure different aspects of upper limb function after CIMT intervention. It has been proven that Pediatric Motor Activity Log(PMAL), Quality of Upper Extremities Skills Test(QUEST), Melbourne Assessment of Unilateral Upper Limb Function(MAULF), Assisting Hand Assessment (AHA) are effective. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cortical change in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy after CIMT. As a result, use-dependent cortical reorganization was revealed. Also, increased activity of the contralateral motor cortex and decreased activity of the ipsilateral cortex were found. It supports the mechanism of cortical reorganization, the principles of neural plasticity and specifically activation of the contralateral cortex, for improving upper limb function after CIMT.