Enhancement of STroke REhabilitation with Levodopa (ESTREL): Rationale and design of a randomized placebo-controlled, double blind superiority trial.

Rationale: Novel therapeutic approaches are needed in stroke recovery. Whether pharmacological therapies are beneficial for enhancing stroke recovery is unclear. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in motor learning, reward, and brain plasticity.

Comparing a Novel Neuroanimation Experience to Conventional Therapy for High-Dose Intensive Upper-Limb Training in Subacute Stroke: The SMARTS2 Randomized Trial.

Background: Evidence from animal studies suggests that greater reductions in poststroke motor impairment can be attained with significantly higher doses and intensities of therapy focused on movement quality. These studies also indicate a dose-timing interaction, with more pronounced effects if high-intensity therapy is delivered in the acute/subacute, rather than chronic, poststroke period.

Objective: To compare 2 approaches of delivering high-intensity, high-dose upper-limb therapy in patients with subacute stroke: a novel exploratory neuroanimation therapy (NAT) and modified conventional occupational therapy (COT).

Automated and Quantitative Assessment of Tactile Mislocalization After Stroke.

Topesthesia, the recognition of tactile stimulation location on the skin, can be severely affected by neurological injuries, such as stroke. Despite topesthesia being crucial for manipulating objects and interacting with the environment during activities of daily living, deficits cannot be quantitatively captured with current clinical assessments and are, as a consequence, not well-understood. The present work describes a novel automated assessment tool for tactile mislocalization in neurological patients with somatosensory deficits.

Does motivation matter in upper-limb rehabilitation after stroke? ArmeoSenso-Reward: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Fifty percent of all stroke survivors remain with functional impairments of their upper limb. While there is a need to improve the effectiveness of rehabilitative training, so far no new training approach has proven to be clearly superior to conventional therapy. As training with rewarding feedback has been shown to improve motor learning in humans, it is hypothesized that rehabilitative arm training could be enhanced by rewarding feedback.

Autonomous rehabilitation at stroke patients home for balance and gait: safety, usability and compliance of a virtual reality system.

Background: New technologies, such as telerehabilitation and gaming devices offer the possibility for patients to train at home. This opens the challenge of safety for the patient as he/she is called to exercise neither with a therapist on the patients' side nor with a therapist linked remotely to supervise the sessions.

Aim: To study the safety, usability and patient acceptance of an autonomous telerehabilitation system for balance and gait (the REWIRE platform) in the patients home.

Fully embedded myoelectric control for a wearable robotic hand orthosis.

To prevent learned non-use of the affected hand in chronic stroke survivors, rehabilitative training should be continued after discharge from the hospital. Robotic hand orthoses are a promising approach for home rehabilitation. When combined with intuitive control based on electromyography, the therapy outcome can be improved.

Usability Evaluations of a Wearable Inertial Sensing System and Quality of Movement Metrics for Stroke Survivors by Care Professionals.

Background: Inertial motion capture systems are used in many applications such as measuring the movement quality in stroke survivors. The absence of clinical effectiveness and usability evidence in these assistive technologies into rehabilitation has delayed the transition of research into clinical practice. Recently, a new inertial motion capture system was developed in a project, called INTERACTION, to objectively measure the quality of movement (QoM) in stroke survivors during daily-life activity.

Usability Evaluation of a VibroTactile Feedback System in Stroke Subjects.

Background: To increase the functional capabilities of stroke subjects during activities of daily living, patients receive rehabilitative training to recover adequate motor control. With the goal to motivate self-training by use of the arm in daily life tasks, a sensor system (Arm Usage Coach, AUC) was developed that provides VibroTactile (VT) feedback if the patient does not move the affected arm above a certain threshold level. The objective of this study is to investigate the usability of this system in stroke subjects.

Self-directed arm therapy at home after stroke with a sensor-based virtual reality training system.

Background: The effect of rehabilitative training after stroke is dose-dependent. Out-patient rehabilitation training is often limited by transport logistics, financial resources and a lack of motivation/compliance. We studied the feasibility of an unsupervised arm therapy for self-directed rehabilitation therapy in patients' homes.