Deficits in obstacle avoidance behaviour in individuals with good arm recovery after stroke

The ability to avoid obstacles during reaching in a virtual environment (VE) was compared between post-stroke individuals with well-recovered upper limbs (UL) and healthy controls. Stroke subjects ranked well in UL clinical assessments. However, even though well-recovered, stroke subjects still had residual movement deficits and made more errors in the obstacle avoidance reaching task compared to controls. Reaching movement deficits were only revealed because of the challenging motor task. Therefore, the potential of using complex UL tasks to challenge the sensorimotor system and reveal deficits in higher-order sensorimotor function should be considered when assessing individuals after stroke.