Clinical experience of post-stroke rehabilitation with the use of hand exoskeleton controlled by brain-computer interface

Aim - to evaluate the efficiency of the motor recovery rehabilitation procedure with the use of hand exoskeleton controlled by the brain-computer interface (BCI). Materials and methods. 60 post-stroke patients participated in the study. 46 patients had ischemic stroke and 14 had hemorrhagic stroke. 42 patients of the main experimental group were trained in kinesthetic motor imagery using hand exoskeleton controlled by BCI, 18 patients of the control group carried out the imitating procedure. Exoskeleton - BCI system consists of encephalograph NVX52 («Medical Computer Systems», Russia), personal computer and hand exoskeleton («Android Technique», Russia). Motor functions were estimated by neurological scales ARAT and Fugl-Meyer. Results were statistically analyzed by Mann-Whitney, Wilcoxon and x2 tests, Spearman's correlation and RM-ANOVA using Statsoft Statistica v. 6.0. Results. It is shown that post-stroke patients are able to control BCI with the same efficiency as healthy subjects, regardless of the duration, severity and localization of the disease. Ten days of BCI training significantly improved patients’ motor functions according to neurological scales ARAT and Fugl-Meyer. Improvement was mainly provided by the small movements of the hand. According to several sections of neurological scales, improvement in the main group is significantly higher than in the control group. However, according to general scores, statistically significant difference between two groups was not observed. Conclusion. It is shown that the rehabilitation procedure using hand exsoskeleton controlled by BCI significantly improves motor functions of the paretic arm regardless of the duration, severity and localization of the disease. Increase of the training duration enhances the rehabilitation efficiency.