What does science tell us about the Motus Nova Stroke Rehab System?
With Dr. Nick Housley 13th Nov, 21Transcript
What does science tell us about the Motus Nova Stroke Rehab System?
Motus Nova stroke rehab system is specifically designed to help stroke survivors increase their motor function in stroke recovery. Motus Nova is data-driven and uses scientifically reviewed evidence. Further, it can detect even the slightest improvement.
The fundamental concept behind Motus Nova
Motus Nova is actually inspired by a program called Constraint Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT). Edward Taub back in the late 90s and later Steve Wolf got involved, and they sort of translated repetitive task practice for individuals with neurologic injuries, specifically with a stroke.
In the CIMT approach, you would constrain the less affected limb and force the affected limb to do a lot of movement to complete tasks. And this has shown over time to be very positive in terms of inducing changes in the brain.
However, the challenge with the CIMT approach is that it is very costly because it takes a lot of resources to have a physical or occupational therapist be one-on-one with a given patient for six to eight hours of therapy a day. And frankly, there are not enough Physical therapists (PTs) or Occupational Therapists (OTs) in the world to help even the stroke surviving population, let alone anyone else.
How does Motus Nova work to help stroke patients?
The scientists thought that they could use some technological solutions to make something that would help recapitulate a portion of this approach but not the whole thing.
Further, the idea was that along with containing the less affected side, there should be some device to put on the impaired side to help the patient become aware of that side and basically force him to use it in a directed way. Further, the Motus Hand provides biofeedback for visual motor integration. It is going to provide biofeedback because it can sense your movement.
Moreover, it can provide a tailored amount of assistance to either initiate movement or increase it, which is difficult to accomplish in a traditional rehab program. Additionally, the Motus Nova stroke rehab system hides all these calculations behind activities and games. The reason is that it is fun to play games, and rehab is not always so fun.
In addition, Motus Nova detects very fine scales of movement capabilities like a fraction of degree of movement, and then you can amplify those. Nonetheless, this process can take some time to relearn to use your limb. Furthermore, it uses the concept of motor learning and neural rehab and measures progress with information about Knowledge of Performance (KP) and Knowledge of Results (KR) in terms of motor learning.
Conclusion
In summary, the Motus Nova stroke rehab system contains robotics devices such as Motus Hand and Motus Foot for stroke survivors. These robotic devices use the concept of Constraint Induced Movement Therapy to help stroke patients to perform high dose repetitive task practice. As a result, the system not only assists them in initiating movement but also amplifies it.