A clinical study of motor imagery-based brain-computer interface for upper limb robotic rehabilitation

Non-invasive EEG-based motor imagery brain-computer interface (MI-BCI) holds promise to effectively restore motor control to stroke survivors. This clinical study investigates the effects of MI-BCI for upper limb robotic rehabilitation compared to standard robotic rehabilitation. The subjects are hemiparetic stroke patients with mean age of 50.2 and baseline Fugl-Meyer (FM) score 29.7 (out of 66, higher = better) randomly assigned to each group respectively (N = 8 and 10). Each subject underwent 12 sessions of 1-hour rehabilitation for 4 weeks. Significant gains in FM scores were observed in both groups at post-rehabilitation (4.9, p = 0.001) and 2-month post-rehabilitation (4.9, p = 0.002). The experimental group yielded higher 2-month post-rehabilitation gain than the control (6.0 versus 4.0) but no significance was found (p = 0.475). However, among subjects with positive gain (N = 6 and 7), the initial difference of 2.8 between the two groups was increased to a significant 6.5 (p = 0.019) after adjustment for age and gender. Hence this study provides evidence that BCI-driven robotic rehabilitation is effective in restoring motor control for stroke.