Dissociating Sensorimotor Recovery and Compensation Following Neurological Injury

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Background

Improvements in sensorimotor performance following neurological injury (e.g. stroke, traumatic brain injury, etc.) can occur through two processes: recovery and compensation. Sensorimotor recovery refers to the return of pre-injury, unimpaired movement patterns, while sensorimotor compensation involves the use of new patterns (e.g. increased trunk lean to compensate reduced shoulder/elbow range of motion, increased hip circumduction for ground clearance, etc.) and/or different effectors to accomplish a movement or a task (e.g. increased reliance on the less-affected limb for daily activities, using the forearm to carry a bag through a flexed elbow posture instead of using hooked fingers, etc.). Any improvement in sensorimotor performance in patients is likely to be a combination of these two processes, depending on the extent and type of the injury, and the nature and intensity of the therapy received post-injury.

The ability to measure and separate recovery from compensation mechanisms for a given task performance is crucial for:
(a) evaluating the effectiveness of treatment and clinical decision making.
(b) longitudinally tracking changes in those components to assess capacity for recovery in a patient.
(c) evaluating and understanding the recovery mechanisms of various existing and novel therapies (e.g. tracking changes in arm use following constraint-induced movement therapy or reinforcement-induced movement therapy)

Unfortunately, commonly used clinical outcome measures based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) focus on task accomplishment with little emphasis on the quality and nature of the movements being assessed, and thus cannot dissociate between recovery and compensation.

The aim of this Research Topic is to bring together research focused on the quantification of both recovery and compensation components in the performance of different fundamental movements (e.g. reaching, reach-and-grasp, bimanual upper-limb movements, postural control, balance and stability, gait, etc.) and activities of daily living of interest in neurorehabilitation. The primary emphasis is on novel assessment and sensing protocols, and quantitative methods for measuring and dissociating between these components from objective sensor data, such as kinematics, forces, EMG activity, etc.

We welcome research articles targeting dissociation of recovery and compensation through quantitative means, including in the following subtopics:
● Novel mathematical or statistical approaches to quantifying recovery and compensation.
● Technology-based assessments (e.g. robot- or sensor-based) studies healthy and patient populations.
● Frameworks for quantitative assessment of recovery and compensation.
● New clinical assessment scales (human-rated, questionnaire, etc.), validation of existing clinical measures
● Systematic investigation of existing methods on unimpaired and patient data.

In addition, we welcome papers that can, indirectly, enable research in the area, such as:
● Open datasets of various movements and tasks from unimpaired and/or impaired subjects

Keywords: neurorehabilitation, sensorimotor assessment, sensor-based assessment, robotic assessments, clinical assessment scales, theoretical frameworks, movement quality measures, open datasets.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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