Trial of New Stroke Recovery Device Set to Begin
From: Rehab Management - 01/20/2016

"We (researchers from Newcastle University and colleagues at the Institute of
Neurosciences, Kolkata, India) have developed a miniaturized device which
delivers an audible click followed by a weak electric shock to the arm muscle
to strengthen the brain’s connections. This means the stroke patients in the
trial are wearing an earpiece and a pad on the arm, each linked by wires to
the device so that the click and shock can be continually delivered to them,"
explains Stuart Baker, professor of Movement Neuroscience at Newcastle
University, who is leading the trial, in a media release from Newcastle
University.

"We think that if they wear this for 4 hours a day we will be able to see a
permanent improvement in their extensor muscle connections which will help
them gain control on their hand," adds Baker, senior author of a study about
the device, published recently in The Journal of Neuroscience.

In the study, the release explains, the Newcastle University researchers
report how they pair a click in a headphone with an electric shock to a
muscle to induce the changes in connections either strengthening or weakening
reflexes depending on the sequence selected. They demonstrated that wearing
the portable electronic device for seven hours strengthened the signal
pathway in more than half of the subjects (15 out of 25).

Read the entire article at:
http://www.rehabpub.com/2016/10/trial-new-stroke-recovery-device-set-begin

Links:
Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity in the Long-Latency Stretch Reflex
  following Paired Stimulation from a Wearable Electronic Device
http://jneurosci.org/content/36/42/10823

Stuart Baker
http://www.movementlab.org/sbaker.html

Movement Laboratory
http://www.movementlab.org/index.html

Stroke Research Group
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/medicalsciences/research/groups/stroke