Grant: Project Grant

Sixty-two thousand Canadians have a stroke each year. Many will have problems moving and sensing their arm(s). Most will participate in rehabilitation to promote recovery and improve their quality of life after stroke. Stroke rehabilitation involves learning to move again through intensive practice. Unfortunately, the majority of motor learning principles that are applied in the clinic are derived from studying healthy people with normal brain function. These principles may not apply when the brain is damaged by stroke. Despite agreement that motor learning is critical for stroke therapy and recovery, the majority of studies have focused on the chronic phase of stroke (> 6 months). This is outside of the critical window when most therapy and recovery take place. This project uses robotics to measure biomarkers of motor learning and understand how they influence stroke recovery. Robots offer sensitive, objective assessments of arm function that make them ideal for studying the relationship between motor learning and stroke recovery. We will use biomarkers of motor learning to measure how strokes that damage brain areas that are important for movement and sensation impact the ability to learn and recover arm movements. We will measure motor learning abilities within the first few days after stroke, compare them with healthy adults of similar age, and track how they change during the first 6-months of stroke recovery. We will use Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to determine how brain lesions impact motor learning after stroke. Pairing biomarkers of motor learning with neuroimaging will improve our understanding of impairment, its neural basis, and recovery. This project will give us a better understanding of which stroke survivors are most impaired in motor learning. In the long term, the results may help in developing patient-centered rehabilitation strategies that optimize stroke recovery.