Act. Sense - Active Sensorimotor Training for Chronic Stroke Survivors

Project IDRFP-19002
PartnerTan Tock Seng Hospital
Focus
Precision Rehabilitation, Neurological, Stroke
Project PI
Dr Ananda SIDARTA
Research Fellow, Rehabilitation Research Institute of Singapore
Clinical PI
Dr LOH Yong Joo​
Adjunct Research Scientist, Rehabilitation Research Institute of Singapore
Senior Consultant and Deputy head of department in Rehabilitation Medicine
Tan Tock Seng Hospital
MentorProf ANG Wei Tech
Executive Director, Research Institute of Singapore
Associate Professor
School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and LKC School of Medicine,
Nan​yang Technological University

 

The challenge

An estimated one-half of stroke patients with paretic arm also have impairment in sensory discrimination ability that is not currently being adequately addressed in their rehabilitation therapy.

 

The proposed solution

In this proposed study, we aim to investigate the use of intensive training on patients with chronic stroke using a unique task that combines both motor and sensory (proprioceptive) components.

  • For ten sessions consecutively, the patients will go through intensive behavioural training with a robotic device. The sensory training will involve sensory discrimination testing of different movement directions while the patients remain passive.
  • It will give positive feedback for each correct judgement.
  • Additionally, sensory and motor performance, as well as clinical assessment, will be evaluated during the first and last training sessions to measure the efficacy of the proposed protocol.

We aim to prove that combining sensory and motor tasks within the same therapy session will provide benefit in terms of improvement in motor performance.