Stroke causes long-term disability to the survivors. Each year about 15 million people suffer from stroke world-wide.
Stroke survivors face motor impairments as well as cognitive deficits, and early intervention to restore these deficits is crucial in order to perform their daily activities.
In Denmark, a total of 12,000 incidents are reported each year making it the leading cause of long-term disability.
Further, the disability causes a huge burden on care givers due to limited and expensive rehabilitation protocols. The extensive care needed for post-stroke patients mount up to 4% of the total expenditures in the Danish healthcare system.
With limited availability of resources, these figures show the pressing need for novel and advanced research methods to provide practical neuro-rehabilitation tools for such patients.
Presently, the main approach underlying motor recovery involves enhanced activity of the primary motor cortex induced by active motor training (AMT), Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) and pharmacological interventions.
Alternative strategies are sought for as physical movements by stroke survivors are limited or often not possible.
The mental rehearsal of physical movement tasks or in other words, the movement imagery (MI), can be seen as an approach to access the motor system and rehabilitation at all stages of stroke recovery. This opens up the opportunity to explore the use of brain computer interface (BCI) systems with its neuro-feedback ability as an innovative practical approach to neuro-rehabilitation.
Due to the bidirectional interaction between the brain and the computer, BCI appears appropriate for neuro-rehabilitation applications as it can be used to alter the brain functions through neural plasticity.
In this project, a BCI controlled system is proposed as a complete neuro-rehabilitation tool for post-stroke patients to regain fine motor skills in the fingers so that the hand gripping function can be triggered.
An inexpensive portable neuro-rehabilitating training system is envisioned which can potentially cause neural plasticity and improvement in the motor skills. The method will be based on controlling a FES device attached on the affected arm, using the EEG of the patients.
CACHET – Copenhagen Center for Health Technology has granted 1 mio DKK
Glostrup Hospital and the DTU-GLO committee has granted 1 mio DKK