Effects of robot viscous forces on arm movements in chronic stroke survivors: a randomized crossover study
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Our previous work showed that speed is linked to the ability to recover in chronic stroke survivors. Participants moving faster on the first day of a 3-week study had greater improvements on the Wolf Motor Function Test.
METHODS: We examined the effects of three candidate speed-modifying fields in a crossover design: negative viscosity, positive viscosity, and a "breakthrough" force that vanishes after speed exceeds an individualized threshold.
RESULTS: Negative viscosity resulted in a significant speed increase when it was on. No lasting after effects on movement speed were observed from any of these treatments, however, training with negative viscosity led to significant improvements in movement accuracy and smoothness.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that negative viscosity could be used as a treatment to augment the training process while still allowing participants to make their own volitional motions in practice.
TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at Northwestern University (STU00206579) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (2018-1251).
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Preliminary Toxicity Analysis of 3DCRT versus IMRT on the High Dose Arm of the RTOG 0126 Prostate Cancer Trial
- Adaptive Radiotherapy for Head and Neck Cancer: Initial Clinical Outcomes from a Prospective Trial
- American Association of Physicists in Medicine Task Group 263: Standardizing Nomenclatures in Radiation Oncology
- Motion Management Strategies and Technical Issues Associated with Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy of Thoracic and Upper Abdominal Tumors: A Review from NRG Oncology
- High-dose-rate interstitial brachytherapy as a monotherapy for localized prostate cancer: treatment description and preliminary results of a phase I/II clinical trial
- Highly efficient training, refinement, and validation of a knowledge-based plan quality control system for radiotherapy clinical trials
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.