The Need.
Based on his experience as a neurologist and stroke rehabilitation expert, Dr. Carter has proposed a two-part framework to define the need at hand. The first part is the hypothesis that in the first few hours or days after a stroke, the brain is actively cycling through novel motor pathways in an attempt to recognize neural routes that will elicit motion in the affected limbs. The second part of the hypothesis is that multimodal feedback, when associated with voluntary motion, will allow the patient’s brain to robustly identify successful motor programs, thereby preventing the loss of functionality that is sometimes observed in acute stroke patients. Dr. Carter has stated that patients can sometimes produce voluntary motion in the affected side one day, but lose this ability a short time later. He believes this is due to an inability of the brain to recognize successful motion (due to sensory or cognitive deficiencies), which in turn leads to a rejection of the motor program by the brain in favor of another potential program.
No current therapeutic approaches provide targeted multimodal feedback beyond what is verbally provided by the therapist. Therefore, there exists a need for a system that takes fine movements (dexterous finger motion, pinching, etc.) as an input, and provides amplified, multimodal feedback to the patient. The Scope.
The product scope of this design is a system that addresses the above need, while remaining accessible across a wide user demographic, transportable around the rehabilitation center/clinic/hospital, and easy to operate. The project scope requires brainstorming solutions that meet the need, as well as designing, then optimizing the system.
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