A robotic approach to investigate rehabilitation induced recovery of sensorimotor function

Rehabilitation robotics has attracted broad research interest and a variety of robotic systems have been made available. However, its technical advantages have not been fully explored to promote better functional recovery of patients. In this work, a robotic approach has been presented to evaluate rehabilitation induced recovery of sensorimotor function. The robotic system delivers well-controlled and reproducible sensorimotor tasks to interact with the patient, and the corresponding brain activities of the patient are detected and recorded by functional brain imaging procedures. With this, the brain activation pattern of the patient can be tracked during the rehabilitation process for the designed sensorimotor stimuli. This provides an effective tool for rehabilitation research and practice to optimize the training strategy, and eventually helps to achieve better recovery of patients.