Literature sharing: Brain-computer Interface-Based Soft Robotic Guante Rehabilitación for Ictus - Centro de Ictus

Background：Upper limb impairment is common in ictus and can have a devastating impact on the daily lives of ictus survivors. Conventional rehabilitación strategies targeting motor impairments in ictus survivors include the multidisciplinary treatments of physical terapia and occupational terapia. Recently, techniques such as constraint-induced movimiento terapia, mirror terapia (MT), and robot-assisted terapia utilise end effector systems. While such approaches have been reported to be efficacious in several studies, they largely require a minimum level of residual movimiento of the paretic limbs to carry out, and this excludes a large proportion of ictus patients, such as in the case of CIMT. Using brain-computer interface (BCI)-based motor imagery (MI) presents an alternative means of rehabilitación to address the issue faced by patients with negligible residual motor función.

Objective: This randomized controlled feasibility study investigates the ability for clinical application of the Brain-Computer Interface-based Soft Robotic Guante (BCI-SRG) incorporating activities of daily living (ADL)-oriented tasks for ictus rehabilitación.

Methods: Eleven recruited chronic ictus patients were randomized into the BCI-SRG or Soft Robotic Guante (SRG) group. Each group underwent a 120-minute intervention per session comprising 30-minute standard arm terapia and 90-minute experimental terapia (BCI-SRG or SRG). To perform ADL tasks, the BCI-SRG group used motor imagery-BCI and SRG, while the SRG group used SRG without motor imagery-BCI. Both groups received 18 sessions of intervention over 6 weeks. Fugl-Meyer Motor Assessment (FMA) and Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) scores were measured at baseline (week 0), post-intervention (week 6), and follow-ups (week 12 and 24). In total, 10/11 patients completed the study with 5 in each group and 1 dropped out.

Results: Though there were no significant intergroup differences for FMA and ARAT during 6-week intervention, the improvement of FMA and ARAT seemed to sustain beyond 6-week intervention for BCI-SRG group, as compared with SRG control. Incidentally, all BCI-SRG subjects reported a sense of vivid movimiento of the ictus-impaired upper limb and 3/5 had this phenomenon persisting beyond intervention while none of SRG did.

Conclusion: BCI-SRG suggested probable trends of sustained functional improvements with peculiar kinesthetic experience outlasting active intervention in chronic ictus despite the dire need for large-scale investigations to verify statistical significance. Adding BCI to soft robotic training for ADL-oriented ictus rehabilitación holds promise for sustained improvements and elicited perception of motor movements.

As the innovative brain-computer interface-based soft robotic guante (BCI-SRG), the Syrebo mano rehabilitación robot (BCI) based on the principles of motor imagery and neural plasticity can achieve a "perception-control" bidirectional closed-loop neural stimulation, significantly improving rehabilitación effectiveness. It adopts a brain-inspired algorithm to capture EEG, ensuring data accuracy. At the same time, It can collect EEG signal data and can be viewed on software, providing references for rehabilitación programs and clinical research. Request demo & trial: [email protected]

Reference: Cheng N, Phua KS, Lai HS,et al. Brain-Computer Interface-Based Soft Robotic Guante Rehabilitación for Ictus. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2020 Dec;67(12):3339-3351.