Deans' stroke musings: Dr. A.M. Barrett receives NIH funding to study hand function poststroke

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, March 17, 2018

Dr. A.M. Barrett receives NIH funding to study hand function poststroke

If you know her tell her that 100% hand recovery is the only goal she should be striving for, NOTHING LESS. Already I don't see this helping much, no talk at all of preventing the neuronal cascade of death damage.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-03/kf-dab031518.php

Kessler Foundation joins New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and Northeastern University in a multi-site project utilizing virtual reality training for hand rehabilitation in the acute rehabilitation setting

Kessler Foundation

East Hanover, NJ. March 15, 2018. A.M. Barrett, MD, of Kessler Foundation has received a five-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) sub-award to study new strategies for restoring hand function after stroke.

The R01 grant to New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) titled, "Optimizing hand rehabilitation post-stroke using interactive virtual environments (HD58301)," funds four sites, each with a Project Director/Principal Investigator: NJIT (Sergei Adamovich, PhD), Kessler Foundation (Dr. Barrett), Rutgers University (Alma Merians, PT, PhD), and Northeastern University (Eugene Tunik, PT, PhD). Kessler Foundation will receive $1,200,000 over the five-year grant cycle.

Regaining hand function after stroke can be a significant factor in successfully returning individuals to their homes, communities, and the workplace. Research indicates that intensive training can be beneficial, but may need to be delivered soon after stroke, during a critical period of heightened plasticity. This project will compare traditional rehabilitation methods with hand training using robotics and game-based virtual reality (VR), and investigate the optimal timing for intensive rehabilitation.

The VR system is designed to encourage movement of each finger and increase range of motion, and provides visual feedback to reinforce motor networks in the affected hemisphere. "A specialized glove enables participants to interact with objects on a computer screen in a series of video game-like tasks," explained Dr. Barrett, director, Stroke Rehabilitation Research at Kessler Foundation and chief, Neurorehabilitation Program Innovation at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation. "They will perform these tasks with their impaired hand and/or arm, or while using a robotic arm. Using the robotic arm, they are able to touch or grasp objects on the screen, which helps exercise the muscles of their arm and hand." Physical therapists from Rutgers and NJIT will perform training and evaluations on participants recruited through Kessler Foundation and Kessler Institute, where the study will take place.

"This is a significant study in terms of collaboration as well as the integration of research and technology to advance patient care and improve functional outcomes," noted Steven Kirshblum, MD, senior medical officer, Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, chief medical officer, Kessler Foundation, and chair of the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

This project will help determine the most effective ways to improve(NOT recover all functions) hand function after stroke, and optimal timing for such interventions.(God, the tyranny of low expectations already baked in.) "We anticipate that our findings will contribute to advancements in stroke rehabilitation that will improve quality of life for many stroke survivors," concluded Dr. Barrett.