Shulou(Shulou.com)05/31 Report--

The most obvious sign of survival after a stroke is usually that they have difficulty speaking or walking. But another challenge may have a greater impact on a person's daily life: often, stroke survivors lose sensory and muscle control of one arm and one hand, making it difficult for them to wear and feed or handle everyday items (such as toothbrushes or doorknobs).

Now doctors and engineers at Stanford University and the Georgia Institute of Technology are working to develop a new treatment that could help more stroke survivors regain the ability to control their arms and hands. This is a vibrating glove that gently stimulates the wearer's hand for hours a day.

Caitlyn Seim, a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, launched the project in the hope that the stimulation of gloves will have the same effect as more traditional exercise programs. After developing the prototype, she found colleagues from Stanford University, Maarten Lansberg, associate professor of neurology, and Allison Okamura, professor of mechanical engineering, to expand her efforts. With the help of a translation grant from Neuroscience: Wuzhai Neuroscience Institute, the trio are working to improve their prototype gloves to bring the equipment closer to clinical testing.

"the concept behind this is that users wear gloves for a few hours a day in normal daily life-going to the supermarket or reading at home," Seim said. We want to find something that can really help stroke survivors. "

To achieve new stroke treatment.

The goals of Sam, Lansburg and Okamura are a difficult task. Although there are some personal success stories, the reality is that most stroke patients find it difficult to regain the ability to speak, walk and take care of themselves.

"Stroke can affect patients in many ways, including arm function, gait, vision, speech and cognitive problems," Lansberg said. despite decades of research, "there is basically no treatment to help stroke patients recover these functions."

It was in this context that all three researchers independently began to think about what they could do to improve the lives of stroke survivors. As a group of doctors, Lansberg has been treating stroke patients for many years and helped lead the Stanford Stroke Collaborative Action Network, or SCAN, another project of the Wuzi Neuroscience Institute. At the same time, Okamura focused most of his research on tactile or tactile devices. Over the past few years, her lab has spent more and more time thinking about how to use these devices to help stroke survivors.

"the rehabilitation program provides me with a unique opportunity to work directly with patients affected by our research," Okamura said. " The potential to turn this technology into a commercial product is also very exciting, with relatively rapid access to a large number of stroke patients in need of treatment. "

For her part, Seim's interest in strokes stems from her interest in wearable computing devices, rather than making more virtual reality goggles and smartwatches. Seim says she wants to apply wearable computing to health and accessibility. "for me, this is the most prominent problem," she said.

Come up with new ideas.

With this ambition in mind, Seim built a prototype of vibrating gloves, hoping to stimulate nerves and improve the sensation and function of the hands and arms of stroke survivors. After collecting some promising preliminary data, Sam contacted the Stanford team.

"Stanford has SCAN and StrokeNet, as well as an interdisciplinary engineering and computing research community, so I contacted Maarten and he was very supportive," Seim said.

Now, Seim, Lansberg and Okamura are modifying the design of the gloves to improve their function and increase the comfort and accessibility of the elements. Then they will begin a new round of clinical trials at Stanford.

In the long run, we hope to build something to help stroke survivors restore some of the functions of their hands and arms. If the initial test results come out, the same basic idea could be used to treat other stroke-related complications, Lansberg said.

"Gloves are an innovative idea that shows some prospects in pilot studies," Lansberg said. " If it turns out to be beneficial to patients with impaired arm function, it is conceivable that this change in treatment could be developed to treat patients with impaired gait, for example. "

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