Efficacy of a Motion Sensor and Feedback System to Refine Movements of People With Acquired Neurological Injury: A Series of Case Studies

People with acquired neurological disorders often exhibit impaired movement patterns when performing functional activities such as walking, standing up from a seated position, and reaching for objects. Re-establishing normal movement patterns is an essential part of rehabilitation; however, achievement of this typically requires thousands of accurate movement repetitions. Only through this repetition can a person benefit from the inherent neuroplasticity of the nervous system to make restored patterns habitual.

Sensory and/or proprioceptive problems may limit a person's awareness of ways in which abnormal movement patterns differ from desired ones. Because of these problems, provision of external feedback in the form of verbal comments, physical repositioning of the limbs by another person, or other auditory or haptic cues is critical. As a general rule, a person benefits most when provided with precise feedback about the position of body parts when he/she is actively engaged in performing a desired movement. As such, the linking of motion sensors programmed to detect achievement of a target position with immediate auditory (i.e., beeps) and/or haptic (i.e., vibrations) feedback has the potential to be a powerful treatment tool.

The Kinesthetic Awareness Training (KAT) device developed by PantherTec is a wearable, motion capture system that can be programmed to detect and provide immediate auditory and/or haptic feedback when a person moves a specified body part to a target position during performance of a functional sequence of movements. Each time a person replicates the desired movement, the device either begins emitting or ceases emitting beeps and/or vibrations-as specified during programming-to indicate achievement of the correct position. Adjustment of the sensitivity (i.e., margin of error per target value) allows for specification of how close a performed movement must be to the target position to elicit feedback.

PantherTec has made a prototype of the KAT device available to Quality Living, Inc. (QLI) for feasibility testing and exploration of possible applications with people with movement impairments resulting from acquired neurological injury. The purpose of the proposed case studies is to determine the efficacy of the KAT device in facilitating the restoration of desired movement patterns when people with acquired central nervous system damage perform functional activities such as walking, transitioning from one position to another, or reaching with the arms.