Motivating intervention to rehabilitate motor function of the upper limbs via visual feedback of a rehabilitation game

To establish evidence-based therapy for motor rehabilitation of the upper limbs, we developed a desktop simple exercise machine for upper limbs (D-SEMUL) as a low-cost and high-quality rehabilitation robot. However, the psychological effects of the visual feedback (VF) after the training have not yet been assessed. We investigated the relationship between brain activations and VFs after training in this study. For this purpose, we developed a maze program for the D-SEMUL. Here, the function of the target score (visualized target) was measured as a motivating intervention. We recruited 10 subjects each for a control and an experimental group. Electroencephalogram (EEG) readings from the participants, while they were exposed to the VF after the training, were measured and analyzed to check for the presence of significant differences between two different VFs. Although the results demonstrated no significant differences in the scores among the two groups, the frontal regions of the brain demonstrated a significantly greater degree of activation for VF with target value than without it.