Automated measurement of proprioception following stroke

This is from 2007 but it takes forever to find documentation on stroke rehab. If I were a conspiracy person I would think someone is hiding this on purpose in order to take over the world. You know how smart stroke survivors are and their plans on world conquest.

I hope this got followed up and came to a therapy protocol that actually restores proprioception. My only earlier finding on this was here:
http://oc1dean.blogspot.com/2011/03/proprioception-and-stroke-rehab.html
The research paper here:
http://www.bgu.ac.il/~akarniel/pub/Leibowitz_etalDRinpress.pdf
ABSTRACT
Background: Proprioception provides feedback which is essential for adequate motor
control. Despite having detrimental functional implications, the assessment of proprioception
deficits in current clinical practice is mostly qualitative and inadequate for diagnosis and
longitudinal monitoring of subtle impairments and their effect on motor function.
Purpose: To evaluate a novel quantitative approach to the assessment of proprioception
deficits in stroke patients.
Method: We designed and implemented an automated protocol where a magnetic motion
tracking system and a sensor attached to each of the patient’s hands, enables registration of
trajectories in 3D coordinates. In this protocol the patient’s affected and healthy hands are
placed respectively below and above a square board. With vision blocked, the subject’s
affected hand is passively moved to one of four locations, and then the patient is instructed to
actively position the healthy hand directly above his/her perceived location of the affected
hand. The positional difference between the two hands is automatically recorded by the
system. This procedure is repeated several times and the magnitude and direction of errors
are used to quantify the proprioception deficit. The data for this pilot study was collected in a
sample of 22 stroke patients and an age-matched group of neurologically intact subjects.
Results: Stroke patients had significantly higher mean distance error compared with the control group (average values of 7.9 and 5.3 cm, respectively), and showed higher instability (variance) in repeated performance (average values of the standard deviation of errors 3.4 and 1.8 cm, respectively). Significant correlation was found between the mean distance error and the results of semi-quantitative clinical tests of proprioception.
Conclusion: The system provides a reliable quantitative measure of upper limb proprioception, offering considerable advantage over the traditional means applied in the clinic.