Julia And Dr. Housley Talk About How Motivation For Rehab Affects Long Term Outcomes
With Dr. Nick Housley 27th Jul, 21How Motivation For Rehab Affects Long-Term Outcomes?
Motivation is super important and cannot be emphasized enough. The Motus Hand is a robotic system that can help you increase your range of motion, prevent contractures and improve tissue quality. But you will not see any positive changes unless you are motivated and are actively engaged in the process.
The Necessity Of Motivation In Stroke Rehab
The necessity of interventions to drive improvements in our brains
is that someone is willing and able to be actively engaged for a
long time to induce positive changes. For instance, the process by
which we learn to move for the very time. You have probably seen
young kids that have been in the process of learning to walk for
the very first time. For example, they spend one year trying to
stand up for the first time and taking a step; that is
developmental but not very coordinated.
However, it takes a lot of time for dis-coordinated movements to
generate that network, and it takes years after that to actually
refine that network to eventually become us. And it does not happen
passively, but kids actively engage throughout the process.
Moreover, your improvement depends on how you are doing the
movements. For instance, if you are learning to lift a cup. Try
to lift the cup, and when you fail, you will know it. You have to
actively engage your hand that is trying to reach out to the cup
of coffee. As a result, if you overreach, you will get feedback
that you missed your coffee; you need to reconfigure those neurons
that you recruited. So you will know that you may have to move a
little in another direction. As you are actively engaged in
activities, you will be able to recruit neurons, begin the
learning process, and begin to re-establish those networks.
However, if you do not have the motivation, you can not
engage in activities and long-term outcomes because it does take a
long time. It may take months, years, potentially lifetimes to
actually be on a positive trajectory towards more function. Also,
you lose motivation because everyone around you and your doctor
says that you are not making progress, but you will be motivated
once you start hearing that you can make progress.
The Advantage Of Robotics With Motivation
The fact that you suddenly see active movements and
contractions in your arm after spending a year without any
active movement can be a huge motivator. So when it comes to
finding those little improvements, robotics systems can be good
because they can detect small movements and display them on
the screens.
Further, these robotics systems help you engage in a much more
rich environment than rehab or hospital, where you do repetitive
tasks. In this case, you can do your repetitive tasks, but you are
just playing games. These are some advantages that robotic systems
have to help someone find their way onto a path of motivation and
find their way onto a path of seeing progress.
Conclusion
To conclude, stroke rehab can take months and years, and you cannot be on a positive trajectory towards more function without motivation. Thus, robotics systems like Motus Hand may help motivate you by improving your movement.