Intermuscular Coherence in Clinical Practice. A Review
Abstract
Coherence is a tool that reflects motor cortical function and can be used to study motor control. Coherence is a frequency domain measure of similarity between two signals. Coherence in the beta band (15-35 Hz) is said to originate from cortical sources. Thus, coherence analysis can be used to examine the neural input to muscles. This review explains the concept of coherence and discusses the use of this technique in clinical settings. The data collection procedure involved in coherence analysis is cost-effective, accessible, and simple to carry out. We hypothesize that coherence analysis has clinical relevance as it is altered in various neurological diseases. In this review, we investigate the concept of coherence and examine a few neurological disorders for which coherence values seem indicative of the presence and severity of disease. We found that coherence values have been shown to change in a disease severity-dependent manner. Thus, the variance in coherence correlating with severity of disease could potentially serve as a quantitative physiological marker of neurological disorders.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18103/imr.v2i10.217
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