Pilot study of vibration stimulation on neurological rehabilitation

Abstract

Robot-assisted therapy has been proved effective for dyskinesia, and has many unique advantages compared with traditional treatment, such as repeatability, accuracy, objectivity. But some studies show that the effect of the robot-assisted rehabilitation for improving patients' activities of daily life (ADLs) is not obvious. This study introduces a novel auxiliary method-vibration stimulation combined with robots which may improve patients' ADLs. In controlled trials, two kinds of feedback-vibration and visual feedback are applied to prompt subjects for rehabilitation, and electromyographic signals (EMGs) and motion parameters are recorded in real time. Experimental results show that subjects' EMGs using vibration feedback are similar to healthy people, and characteristics of motion are closer to the theoretical value compared with control group. Vibration stimulation may serve as a kind of efficient auxiliary means to improve the efficiency of neurological rehabilitation.