Active Physical Practice Followed by Mental Practice Using BCI-Driven Hand Exoskeleton: A Pilot Trial for Clinical Effectiveness and Usability

Appropriately combining mental practice (MP) and physical practice (PP) in a poststroke rehabilitation is critical for ensuring a substantially positive rehabilitation outcome. Here, we present a rehabilitation protocol incorporating a separate active PP stage followed by MP stage, using a hand exoskeleton and brain-computer interface (BCI). The PP stage was mediated by a force sensor feedback-based assist-as-needed control strategy, whereas the MP stage provided BCI-based multimodal neurofeedback combining anthropomorphic visual feedback and proprioceptive feedback of the impaired hand extension attempt. A six week long clinical trial was conducted on four hemiparetic stroke patients (screened out of 16) with a left-hand disability. The primary outcome, motor functional recovery, was measured in terms of changes in grip-strength (GS) and action research arm test (ARAT) scores; whereas the secondary outcome, usability of the system was measured in terms of changes in mood, fatigue, and motivation on a visual-analog-scale. A positive rehabilitative outcome was found as the group mean changes from the baseline in the GS and ARAT were +6.38 kg and +5.66 accordingly. The VAS scale measurements also showed betterment in mood (-1.38), increased motivation (+2.10) and reduced fatigue (-0.98) as compared to the baseline. Thus, the proposed neurorehabilitation protocol is found to be promising both in terms of clinical effectiveness and usability.