Sitting device to improve balance in stroke

[gcoe]

Hi fordfornow77

Thanks for your response. It sounds like you are going about this in a systematic way which is great! And on the contrary: it sounds like an excellent task for a mechanical engineering student! - it is one of those areas which needs a multidisciplinary approach. As therapists we might know what the problem is but don't have the means to solve it by thinking creatively about new applications of technology - so that is where we need guys like you to help find solutions.

I wondered if you had read much about models of balance? I am attaching a couple of papers you might find interesting. Both papers are written by excellent researchers in the field and provide a review of components of balance. Unfortunately both are written more for the balance in standing and mobility but most of the underlying principles would be applicable to balance in sitting.

I use Fay Horak's model of components of balance as a way of ordering the assessment. Each component should be assessed seperately and your tool could be used in the employment of each component assessment. Hre are some examples but there are others:
1. the biomechanical constraints component could include managing to stack the body segments appropriately to maintain quiet sitting - so managing to find the "zero point" for your two sensors may be the goal.
2. For the Stability limits and verticality aspects you could see how far the patient can move the sensor in a given direction without loosing balance while reaching for various targets (repeated in different directions), and then ability each time to return to the "zero" position.
3. Sensory strategies could be determined by repeating that quiet sitting task but with different combinations of eyes open and closed and sitting on a soft surface vs sitting on a hard surface. Sitting on a soft surface makes reliance on somatosenory proprioception harder to rely on so you are testing the if the vesitbular and visual systems are being intact or being processed properly. Eyes closed means you have to rely on your vestibular and/or somatosenory proprioception.

Your tool could help quantify such an assessment.

Another thing that might be a useful contact: Mindy Levin, a PT at McGill University, Canada came over to NZ earlier in the year and gave a talk on New techologies of motor learning and recovery. She reviewed a number of commercial and lab based Virtual reality - she has done a lot of work on this over the years and had a wealth of knowledge about different systems, what worked what were the limitations etc. So you might like to try emailing her. Her website is:

Faculty: Mindy Levin