Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 23, 2026
Enhancing Upper Limb Function and Motor Skills Post-Stroke Through an Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robot
Published on: September 6, 2024
Robotic therapy for chronic motor impairments after stroke: Follow-up results
Susan E Fasoli1, Hermano I Krebs, Joel Stein
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Room 3-147, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. sfasoli@mit.edu
Objectives:
To study the effects of robotic rehabilitation in persons with chronic motor impairments after stroke and to examine whether improvements in motor abilities were sustained 4 months after the end of therapy.
Design:
Pretest-posttest design.
Setting:
Rehabilitation hospital, outpatient care.
Participants:
Volunteer sample of 42 persons with persistent hemiparesis from a single, unilateral stroke within the past 1 to 5 years.
Intervention:
Robotic therapy for the paretic upper limb consisted of either sensorimotor active-assistive exercise, or progressive-resistive training during repetitive, planar reaching tasks, 3 times a week for 6 weeks.
Main Outcome Measures:
Modified Ashworth Scale, Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA), Motor Status Scale (MSS) score, and Medical Research Council motor power score.
Results:
No significant differences were found among pretreatment clinical evaluations. Statistically significant gains from admission to discharge and from admission to follow-up (P<.05) were found on the FMA, MSS score for shoulder and elbow, and motor power score.
Conclusions:
Short-term, goal-directed robotic therapy can significantly improve motor abilities of the exercised limb segments in persons with chronic stroke that are sustained 4 months after discharge. This suggests that motor recovery can be enhanced by repetitive exercise training more than 1 year after stroke.
