Manual dexterity is often affected following stroke and is a major issue for autonomy in daily living. How best to improve recovery of manual dexterity remains a key clinical and scientific challenge. Although impressive insights in brain plasticity have been demonstrated in the last decade, aging and degree of lesion to the corticospinal tract, along with other factors, severely restricts functional restoration. Individual factors limiting brain plasticity requires further study. Biomarkers of motor recovery and mechanisms of therapy-mediated gains are also issues of research interest. Improved measurement of hand motor impairments (e.g., with kinematic and kinetic measures) is opening the way for enhanced characterization of motor impairment, an important step in developing more targeted interventions. Some recent studies also suggest a key role of cognition for manual dexterity recovery after stroke and more research on this is indicated. Novel interventions are being tested including non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (e.g., TMS and tDCS) and movement technologies allowing enhanced motivation, intensity of training and enhanced sensory feedback (e.g., robotics and virtual reality). Translating knowledge from such studies into clinically useful interventions remains a key challenge.
With this Research Topic we would like to provide latest insight on recovered motor function of the upper limb following stroke. The Topic Editors welcome original research reports, empirical studies, evaluations, focused reviews, general commentaries, mini reviews, and methods to be submitted to this Research Topic.
We here intend to emphasize the following issues predominantly:
- Biomarkers and monitoring of manual dexterity
- motor outcome measures- how novel measures can improve insights on motor impairment and activity limitation
- Functional imaging of motor representation and connectivity
- Motivation and training: how can we increase dosage to achieve sufficient training gain?
- Personalized intervention approaches
- in which range does structural damage impact functional outcome?
- What are the determinants of spontaneous recovery and what is modulated by evidence based training?
Manual dexterity is often affected following stroke and is a major issue for autonomy in daily living. How best to improve recovery of manual dexterity remains a key clinical and scientific challenge. Although impressive insights in brain plasticity have been demonstrated in the last decade, aging and degree of lesion to the corticospinal tract, along with other factors, severely restricts functional restoration. Individual factors limiting brain plasticity requires further study. Biomarkers of motor recovery and mechanisms of therapy-mediated gains are also issues of research interest. Improved measurement of hand motor impairments (e.g., with kinematic and kinetic measures) is opening the way for enhanced characterization of motor impairment, an important step in developing more targeted interventions. Some recent studies also suggest a key role of cognition for manual dexterity recovery after stroke and more research on this is indicated. Novel interventions are being tested including non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (e.g., TMS and tDCS) and movement technologies allowing enhanced motivation, intensity of training and enhanced sensory feedback (e.g., robotics and virtual reality). Translating knowledge from such studies into clinically useful interventions remains a key challenge.
With this Research Topic we would like to provide latest insight on recovered motor function of the upper limb following stroke. The Topic Editors welcome original research reports, empirical studies, evaluations, focused reviews, general commentaries, mini reviews, and methods to be submitted to this Research Topic.
We here intend to emphasize the following issues predominantly:
- Biomarkers and monitoring of manual dexterity
- motor outcome measures- how novel measures can improve insights on motor impairment and activity limitation
- Functional imaging of motor representation and connectivity
- Motivation and training: how can we increase dosage to achieve sufficient training gain?
- Personalized intervention approaches
- in which range does structural damage impact functional outcome?
- What are the determinants of spontaneous recovery and what is modulated by evidence based training?
