Deans' stroke musings: Cell phone based balance trainer

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Cell phone based balance trainer

For all you cerebellum ones out there, talk to your therapists to see where they are with this therapy.
provisional pdf here:
http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/pdf/1743-0003-9-10.pdf
abstract:
http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/9/1/10/abstract

Abstract (provisional)

Background

In their current laboratory-based form, existing vibrotactile sensory substitution technologies that provide cues of body motion are impractical for home-based rehabilitation use due to their size, weight, complexity, calibration procedures, cost, and fragility. Methods: We have designed and developed a cell phone based vibrotactile feedback system for potential use in balance rehabilitation training in clinical and home environments. It comprises an iPhone with an embedded tri-axial linear accelerometer, custom software to estimate trunk tilt, a "tactor bud" accessory that plugs into the headphone jack to provide vibrotactile cues of trunk tilt, a small external controller to translate the audio signals from the iPhone into vibrotactile cues, and a battery. Five young healthy subjects (24+/-2.8 yrs, 3 females and 2 males) and four subjects with vestibular involvement (42.25+/-13.5 yrs, 2 females and 2 males) participated in a proof-of-concept study to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. Healthy subjects used the system with eyes closed during Romberg, semi-tandem Romberg, and tandem Romberg stances. Subjects with vestibular involvement used the system with both eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions during semi-tandem Romberg stance. Vibrotactile feedback was provided when the subject exceeded either an anterior-posterior (A/P) or a medial-lateral (M/L) trunk sway threshold. Subjects were instructed to move away from the vibration. Results: The system was capable of providing real-time vibrotactile cues that informed corrective trunk tilt responses. When feedback was available, both healthy subjects and those with vestibular involvement significantly reduced their A/P or M/L RMS trunk sway (depending on the direction of feedback), had significantly smaller elliptical area fits to their sway trajectory, spent a significantly greater mean percentage time within the no feedback zone, and showed a significantly greater A/P or M/L mean power frequency. Conclusion: The results suggest users can use the real-time feedback provided by this system to reduce their trunk sway. Its advantages over more complex laboratory-based and commercial balance training systems in terms of cost, size, weight, functionality, flexibility, and accessibility make it a good candidate for further home-based balance training evaluation.