Feedback-mediated upper extremities exercise: increasing patient motivation in poststroke rehabilitation.

Purpose: This proof-of-concept study investigated whether feedback-mediated exercise (FME) of the affected arm of hemiplegic patients increases patient motivation and promotes greater improvement of motor function, compared to no-feedback exercise (NFE).

Method: We developed a feedback-mediated treatment that uses gaming scenarios and allows online and offline monitoring of both temporal and spatial characteristics of planar movements. Twenty poststroke hemiplegic inpatients, randomly assigned to the FME and NFE group, received therapy five days a week for three weeks.

Control of robot assistant for rehabilitation of upper extremities.

The assisted movement in humans with paresis of upper extremities is becoming popular for neurorehabilitation. We propose a novel method for trajectory selection and assistance control. This paper presents simulation of a planar two degrees of freedom robot that assists horizontal movement of the hand.

Influence of planar manipulandum to the hand trajectory during point to point movement.

We present the analysis of the planar manipulandum effects to the trajectory of point to point movements in horizontal plane. This analysis is of significance for the control of a haptic robot that can be used for the rehabilitation of hemiplegic patients. The effects were assessed by comparing data collected in experiments with healthy subjects when performing simple movements that are used in the therapy of stroke patients.