Task-oriented robot-assisted stroke therapy of paretic limb improves control in a unilateral and bilateral functional drink task: A case study

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functional, temporal and spatial effect of a unilateral task-oriented, robot-assisted training on unilateral and bilateral task performance of a drinking task using a real object. Two chronic stroke survivors experienced task-oriented robot assisted therapy, in which the paretic arm was trained using reaching and grasping tasks over 4 weeks. Both subjects experienced improvement in motor control as measured by Fugl-Meyer. The paretic arm was evaluated using movement smoothness (MS) and time to completion (TCT) measures before and after therapy. From the results, we found that the unilateral robotassisted training improved paretic arm control in the unilateral and the bilateral drink task. However, the influence of the non-paretic movement on the temporal and spatial paretic arm control was evident both pre and post therapy suggesting inter-limb coupling aids in the transfer of unilateral improvements in motor control to improvements in bilateral motor control.