State and trait of finger tapping performance in multiple sclerosis

Abstract

Finger tapping tests have been shown feasible to assess motor performance in multiple sclerosis (MS) and were observed to be strongly associated with the estimated clinical severity of the disease. Therefore, tapping tests could be an adequate tool to assess disease status in MS. In this study we examined potential influencing factors on a maximum tapping task with the whole upper-limb for 10 s in 40 MS patients using linear mixed effects modelling. Patients were tested in three sessions with two trials per body-side per session over the course of 4–27 days of inpatient rehabilitation. Tested factors were the expanded disability scale (EDSS) score, laterality of MS, age, sex, hand dominance, time of day, session, trial (first or second), time between sessions, and the reported day form. A second model used these factors to examine the self-reported day form of patients. Linear mixed effects modelling indicated the tapping test to have a good inter-trial (proportional variance < 0.01) and inter-session reliability (non-significant; when controlling for time between sessions), an influence of hand-dominance (proportional variance 0.08), to be strongly associated with the EDSS (eta2 = 0.22, interaction with laterality of MS eta2 = 0.12) and to be not associated with the reported day form. The model explained 87% (p < 0.01) of variance in tapping performance. Lastly, we were able to observe a positive effect of neurologic inpatient rehabilitation on task performance obvious from a significant effect of the time between sessions (eta2 = 0.007; longer time spans between sessions were associated with higher increments in performance). Day form was only impacted by EDSS and the time of the day (p < 0.01, R2 = 0.57, eta2TIME = 0.017, eta2EDSS = 01.19). We conclude that the tapping test is a reliable and valid assessment tool for MS.

Changes in thumb tapping rates and central motor conduction times are associated in persons with multiple sclerosis

“…One clear limitation that has to be stated ahead discussing our findings is the low intraclass correlation of CMCT (assessed by the untrained upper limb) of 0.61, which is in line with reports on the reliability of CMCT [31]. Changes in CMCT of the upper limb were not associated (p = 0.181-0.424), even after training adjustment of the dominant upper limb, so the chance of a systematic change could be expected very low (for instance: good day or bad day of patients concerning their CMCT, which is in line with recent findings on sensorimotor performance [5]).…”

“…However, the reported intraclass correlation of PEG was 0.90 [12], so a skill transfer remains an option. This is supported by the performance gains in 10 s TAP, which has been shown to be a highly reliable test [5]. Still, the use of this within-subject control design demands caution when interpreting the effects of the control upper limb, since it has been repeatedly shown that, especially due to age of reduced function, the central nervous system is not working in a unilateral way [39].…”

“…Therefore, a sensitive upper-limb surrogate is still lacking. It is important to note that tapping task performance is dependent on many factors [ 5 ], including the complex interplay of a variety of brain regions. Therefore, the main target is not to search a surrogate for the CMCT but to examine the feasibility of tapping tasks to assess short- to midterm changes of the CMCT.…”

“…Tapping tasks have been shown to be a valid tool to assess disease severity and progression in multiple sclerosis (MS) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] (expect in [9]), at least when participants are asked for maximum performance [1]. Commonly used dexterity tasks like the box-and-block or nine-hole peg test [10] are well associated with tapping performance [6,8,11], whereas such dexterity tasks can show low reliability [10] (but an intraclass correlation of 0.90 in [12]).…”

The Association Between Actigraphy-Derived Behavioral Clusters and Self-Reported Fatigue in Persons With Multiple Sclerosis: Cross-sectional Study

“…When anticipating a certain intraindividual and interindividual variance of self-reports, as there can be a plethora of biases [10][11][12], cluster analyses of actigraphic data would have the potential to identify behavioral patterns and validate self-reports by treating a cluster of persons as one type of person. Such an approach could allow us to extract general rules and acknowledge that humans are not very skilled in estimating global aspects of their life [11] or their current sensorimotor performance capacity [13] (ie, that humans tend to show strong interpersonal and intrapersonal variance in self-reports). However, such an exploratory cluster analysis could also result in a single cluster, for instance, if the assessed behavior is a single continuum with only one attractor.…”