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Published on: August 2, 2016
Auditory feedback control for improvement of gait in patients with Multiple Sclerosis
1Department of Computer Science, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. yoram.baram@gmail.com
Objective:
To study the use of auditory feedback for gait management and rehabilitation in patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
Methods:
An auditory feedback cue, responding to the patient's own steps in closed-loop, was produced by a wearable motion sensor and delivered to the patient through ear phones. On-line (device on) and residual short-term therapeutic effects on walking speed and stride length were measured in fourteen randomly selected patients with gait disturbances predominantly due to cerebellar ataxia.
Results:
Patients showed an average improvement of 12.84% on-line and 18.75% residually in walking speed. Average improvement in stride length was 8.30% on-line and 9.93% residually. The improvement results are particularly noteworthy when compared with the lack of change in healthy control subjects.
Conclusions:
Patients with MS using auditory feedback cues showed improvement in walking abilities.
