Deans' stroke musings: A Mirror Therapy–Based Action Observation Protocol to Improve Motor Learning After Stroke

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.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

A Mirror Therapy–Based Action Observation Protocol to Improve Motor Learning After Stroke

This is only 7 months old and requires minimal equipment to implement so if your doctor hasn't put this into practice in your stroke department you need to call the hospital president and ask for the stroke departments head to roll. We can't allow such incompetence to continue. If the president does nothing or pooh-poohs you then it is time to call the board of directors and ask for more heads to roll.
Everything in stroke is so fucking bad we need to burn everything down and start over.
http://nnr.sagepub.com/content/29/6/509?etoc

¹Erasmus MC, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
²Rijndam Rehabilitation Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
³Erasmus MC, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Wouter J. Harmsen, MSc, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Erasmus MC–University Medical Center, Room: Ee 1622, Dr Molewaterplein 50, 3015 GE Rotterdam, Netherlands. Email: w.harmsen@erasmusmc.nl

Abstract

Background. Mirror therapy is a priming technique to improve motor function of the affected arm after stroke.

Objective. To investigate whether a mirror therapy–based action observation (AO) protocol contributes to motor learning of the affected arm after stroke.

Methods. A total of 37 participants in the chronic stage after stroke were randomly allocated to the AO or control observation (CO) group. Participants were instructed to perform an upper-arm reaching task as fast and as fluently as possible. All participants trained the upper-arm reaching task with their affected arm alternated with either AO or CO. Participants in the AO group observed mirrored video tapes of reaching movements performed by their unaffected arm, whereas participants in the CO group observed static photographs of landscapes. The experimental condition effect was investigated by evaluating the primary outcome measure: movement time (in seconds) of the reaching movement, measured by accelerometry.

Results. Movement time decreased significantly in both groups: 18.3% in the AO and 9.1% in the CO group. Decrease in movement time was significantly more in the AO compared with the CO group (mean difference = 0.14 s; 95% confidence interval = 0.02, 0.26; P = .026).

Conclusion. The present study showed that a mirror therapy–based AO protocol contributes to motor learning after stroke.