Transcript – Integrated Feedback for Individuals with Motor Impairments

The focus of this presentation is based upon an experiment that was designed to determine the extent to which individuals with Parkinson’s disease are capable of using integrated back information to coordinate by manual force patterns and to determine if individuals with Parkinson’s disease exhibit increased interference between the limbs as compared to healthy young and older adults. Participants were required to coordinate one, one and one two patterns of force in one. One pattern requires both the right and left limb to produce the same pattern of force simultaneously. While a one two coordination pattern requires one limb to produce two patterns of force for every one pattern produced with the contralateral. This pattern is considered difficult. However, recent research has indicated that young, healthy adults can tune in complex coordination patterns within a few minutes of practice when provided lucid feedback. Using two different by manual performance measures are results indicated that an individual with Parkinson’s was able to coordinate the one, one and one two patterns as effectively as young and older participants when provided Lisa new information. This result supports our hypothesis that training and rehabilitation tasks that use augmented information to facilitate online ER detection and correction will improve border control and individuals with motor impairments. However, distortions and force production was greater and more disruptive for individuals with Parkinson’s than for young and older participants. These disruptions can lead to a loss of stability. Interestingly, our preliminary data indicated that individuals with Parkinson’s may try to control each limb independently. While the limbs are tightly coupled in young and older adults, more data and experiments are needed to confirm this possibility.