Effect of the knee joint tracking training in closed kinetic chain condition for stroke patients

This study tested the hypothesis that our method of knee-joint-tracking training for stroke patients induces significant motor learning effects, and the findings were compared with those of previous studies.

Six stroke patients and six age-matched healthy controls were recruited. The tracking task involved following computer-generated sine waves of changing frequency (0.2, 0.3, or 0.4 Hz) for each repeating cycle with a plot of the knee-joint angle on a computer monitor as closely as possible. The closed-kinetic chain set involved standing with both hands placed on a support table, with one foot placed on a wooden box and the other foot placed on a digital body-weight scale. The sessions in this study were performed in the following sequence: practice, pretest evaluation, 4 weeks of training, and posttraining evaluation. The tracking performance was evaluated with the accuracy index (AI) score.

Tracking training produced a significant improvement not only in the motor-function scores but also in the AI score of the stroke-patient group. The improvement in their AI did not differ significantly from that of the control group.

Our tracking protocol exerted a significant training effect in stroke patients, and the AI improvement was greater than that induced by the most recent protocol. This training will enhance motor skill acquisition and possibly contribute to cortical reorganization.