Development and use of equipment for the assessment of implicit learning in post-stroke individuals.
Neurological Rehabilitation. Learning by association Upper Extremities. Stroke.
Introduction: Stroke is the second leading cause of death in the world and one of the major causes of disability. Recovering the function of upper limb after stroke is one of the major concerns of those affected by the disease and also one of the greatest challenges for those who rehabilitate. Objective: To develop a simple, low-cost and easy-to-handle equipment to evaluate implicit learning, through pointing movements, of the upper extremity in post-stroke individuals. Methods: Experimental study of quantitative character. Performed with post-stroke individuals. Individuals will be randomized according to the degree of disease impairment in mild, moderate and severe, evaluated using the Fugl-Meyer scale. A sample of twenty individuals is desired. The Player Feedback (PF) equipment will be elaborated in order to enable an automated interface with data acquisition boards, capture and processing of implicit learning variables (the number of correct answers, number of errors, number of sequence in which it reached learning, percentage of correct answers, early correct answers and average reaction time), movement times, speed, average acceleration and effectiveness of the movement of the upper extremity from the motor skills of pointing. The evaluation protocol will consist of a single training session, with an average duration of 20-30 minutes, where individuals will perform 25 repetitions of the constant practice of learning. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software (version 20.0) will be used for statistical analysis, and the significance limit will be set at 5%. The normality test will be performed by Shapiro-Wilk. The correlation between clinical tests and task variables will be permeated using spearman's classification correlation coefficient and the Mann Whitney test will be used to compare the motor performance of the healthy limb and affected limb. For the analysis of performance measures (number of correct answers and errors, number of sequence in which it reached learning, percentage of correct answers and errors, score, early correct answers and average reaction time) the CVMob software will be used, with precise and low cost measures.