Game-changer for Parkinson's disease outcomes

This would seem to be easily translatable to stroke rehab. But since your stroke hospital doesn't read or implement any type of research, you're screwed. Nothing will happen. Your stroke medical staff won't be fired for incompetency, you'll just have to live with your disabilities.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-07-game-changer-parkinson-disease-outcomes.html

A unique gaming system called 'OrbIT' will play a lead role in the fight to improve life for individuals living with Parkinson's disease, thanks to funding from the Estate of the late Olga Mabel Woolger.

In a three-year $90,000 study, Flinders University Rehabilitation Engineer, Mr David Hobbs and University of Adelaide neuroscientist Dr. Lyndsey Collins-Praino will partner with Parkinson's South Australia to trial OrbIT as a cognitive training device to improve outcomes and delay dementia onset for people with Parkinson's disease.

The OrbIT gaming system is an accessible, fun, stand-alone computer gaming system that features a novel and easy to use controller. OrbIT engages the player in a targeted, cognitively challenging activity (playing specially designed computer games), while the unique design of the controller facilitates intuitive control without the need for grip and fine motor control. This is particularly important for individuals living with Parkinson's disease, who may often struggle to use traditional gaming controllers.

"Cognitive decline is one of the most significant predicators of quality of life both for individuals living with Parkinson's disease and their caregivers, and currently there are no effective treatments for it," says Dr. Collins-Praino. "We hope that the OrbIT system may be able to help individuals maintain, or even improve, their cognitive function by allowing us to target the areas that are most vulnerable in Parkinson's disease."

Parkinson's disease affects more than 110,000 Australians, with 38 new cases diagnosed every day.

While many people think of Parkinson's disease as a motor disease, it can also be associated with a variety of non-motor impairments, including declines in cognitive function and memory. Within 20 years of diagnosis over 80% of individuals living with Parkinson's disease go on to develop dementia.

"We believe the OrbIT gaming system, which was originally developed for children with cerebral palsy and has also been trialled with people undergoing stroke rehabilitation, has huge potential in other health areas because of the way it was designed," said Mr Hobbs, the lead developer of OrbIT.

"We are really excited to partner with Parkinson's SA and to uncover new applications for this technology to improve the lives of many people with this condition."

The funding will enable the gaming system to be trialled through Parkinson's SA's new Brain x Body Fitness Studio, a studio designed to encourage neuroplasticity. The trial will include both short-term and long-term follow up with individuals, in order to evaluate any lasting benefits of game play.

Chief Executive Officer of Parkinson's SA, Olivia Nassaris said this project is a true example of collaboration.

"Parkinson's South Australia is expanding our research portfolio in partnership with the talented minds from our South Australian universities," Ms Nassaris says.

"David Hobbs at Flinders University at Tonsley created something for one purpose, and Dr. Lyndsey Collins-Praino at the University of Adelaide saw the potential for use and positive impact in another area.

"Together with Parkinson's SA and the generosity of the Estate of the late Olga Mabel Woolger, we have a project that potentially can improve the wellbeing of people living with Parkinson's," said Ms Nassaris.

Explore further: Finding a treatment for Parkinson's disease dementia

Provided by: University of Adelaide

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From Angry Birds to brain mapping: The Gamification of Neuroscience

With 10 million yearly stroke survivors  that number of gamers playing this could easily make great leaps in this knowledge. That great stroke association president should be out there recruiting stroke hospitals to enroll all their stroke patients in this. But we have fucking failures of stroke associations instead, who for some unknown reason have stroke in their name.  It sure is not to solve stroke.

From Angry Birds to brain mapping: The Gamification of Neuroscience

By: SharpBrains

Mouse Retinal Neurons (Type 25), per EyeWire Museum

___

A Quarter Million Gamers Helped Build This Incredibly Detailed Map of the Brain (SingularityHub):

“In 2012, when Angry Birds was in its prime, Seung had an inspiration.

“What if,” he wondered, “we could capture even a small fraction of the mental effort that goes into Angry Birds (for brain mapping)? Think of what we could do.”

Although the initial idea was to use deep learning-based AI tools to reconstruct the neurons, humans were—and still are—better at spotting the patterns of neuronal branches and connectors than machines. Collaborating with Dr. Kevin Slavin, a fellow professor at MIT with a background in game design, Seung tried to make a game about brain tracing as enthralling as a first-person shooter. Spoiler: you can’t … In the game, each player is given a tiny cube of the retinal tissue, about 4.5 microns wide—that’s about the width of a human hair for a 10-by-10 block of cubes. To ensure accuracy, each cell is reviewed by between 5 and 25 gamers—if the results match up, the trace is accepted by the game as being complete. These traces are then fed as “training data” to the deep learning algorithm, which learns to better recognize individual neuronal branches among a giant tangled mass.

Eventually the goal is to automate the entire process. While a pipe dream just five years ago, the power of deep learning in biology has been transformative. A recent study used a powerful algorithm to identify dead neurons in microscope-generated images, a task normally relegated to junior neuroscientist trainees. As more data pours in, EyeWire may eventually learn to self-map, and such a strategy could be adopted to explore other regions in the brain in other species.”

New Study based on EyeWire:

Digital Museum of Retinal Ganglion Cells with Dense Anatomy and Physiology (Cell). Highlights:

• A digital “museum” provides dense anatomy and physiology of retinal ganglion cells
• The inner plexiform layer divides into four sublaminae defined by anatomical criteria
• The aggregate neurite density of a ganglion cell type is approximately uniform
• Inner marginal ganglion cells exhibit significantly more sustained visual responses

To Learn More:

• Understand your connectome, understand yourself
• EyeWire
• EyeWire Museum

Gamified In-Home Rehabilitation for Stroke Survivors: Analytical Review

This should have been absolutely unnecessary because that stroke database of research is completely up-to-date all the time. But it doesn't exist because we have shit for brains in stroke leadership. 

Gamified In-Home Rehabilitation for Stroke Survivors: Analytical Review

Paul TAMAYO-SERRANO¹, Samir GARBAYA², Hossein JAMSHIDI FARSANI¹, Sema ALAçAM³, Pierre BLAZEVIC¹

¹Laboratoire END-ICAP, U1179 INSERM, University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Versailles, 78000 - France, {paul.tamayo-serrano, hossein.jamshidifarsani, pierre.blazevic}@uvsq.fr

²Laboratoire END-ICAP, U1179 INSERM, ENSAM - ParisTech, Paris, 75013 - France, samir.garbaya@ensam.eu

³Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, alacams@itu.edu.tr

Abstract

A stroke is a life-changing event that may end up as a disability, with repercussions on the patient’s quality of life. Stroke rehabilitation therapies are helpful to regain some of the patient’s lost functionality. However, in practice stroke patients may suffer from a gradual loss of motivation. Gamified systems are used to increase user motivation, hence, gamified elements have been implemented into stroke rehabilitation therapies in order to improve patients’ engagement and adherence. This review work focuses on selecting and analyzing developed and validated gamified stroke rehabilitation systems published between 2009 and 2017 to identify the most important features of these systems. After extensive research, 32 articles have met the selection criteria, resulting in a total of 28 unique works. The works were analyzed and a total of 20 features were identified. The features are explained, making emphasis on the works that implement them extensively. Finally, a classification of features based on objectives is proposed, which was used to identify the relationships between features and implementation gaps. It was found that there is a tendency to develop low-cost solutions as in-home therapy systems; to include automated features; provide a diversity of games and use of simple interaction devices. This review allowed the definition of the opportunities for future research direction such as systems addressing the three rehabilitation areas; data analytics to make decisions; motivational content identification based on automatic engagement detection and emotion recognition; and alert systems for patient´s safety.

 

"Virtual physiotherapist" helps paralysed patients exercise using computer games

I bet this never makes it to your hospital. Incompetence from the fucking failures of stroke associations who don't do one damn thing to roll out effective therapy to stroke clinics and hospitals.
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_4-10-2016-16-14-6?utm_source=linkedin
06 October 2016

A simple device can improve the ability of patients with arm disability to play physiotherapy-like computer games, according to new research.

The low-cost invention, called gripAble™, consists of a lightweight electronic handgrip, which interacts wirelessly with a standard PC tablet to enable the user to play arm-training games.  To use it, patients squeeze, turn or lift the handgrip, and it vibrates in response to their performance whilst playing. The device uses a novel mechanism, which can detect the tiny flicker movements of severely paralysed patients and channel them into controlling a computer game.
Special-training computer games, controlled by the device, have been designed for people with no previous experience of using computers. For example one computer game requires the user to squeeze repeatedly to slowly reveal a photograph.
In a new study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from Imperial College London have shown that using the device increased the proportion of paralysed stroke patients able to direct movements on a tablet screen by 50 per cent compared to standard methods. In addition, the device enabled more than half of the severely disabled patients in the study to engage with arm-training software, whereas none of the patients were able to use conventional control methods such as swiping and tapping on tablets and smartphones.
A video showing the device in action, featuring a patient case study, is below
Over five million people in the UK live with arm weakness - approximately one million of them following a stroke, plus others who have neurological and musculoskeletal conditions.  Arm weakness contributes to physical disability that requires expensive long-term care.  For example, treatment for stroke costs the NHS £9 billion a year, which is five per cent of the total NHS budget. The only intervention shown to improve arm function is repetitive, task-specific exercise but this is limited by the cost and availability of physiotherapists.
The gripAble™ device is designed for patients to use unsupervised in hospital and at home. The research tested the gripAble™ device with stroke patients who had suffered successive strokes with arm paralysis at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust over six months. The researchers assessed their ability to use gripAble™  to control mobile gaming devices such as tablets that could be used for rehabilitation and compared this to their use of conventional methods such as swiping and tapping.

We have developed the gripAble™ device to improve arm and cognitive function of patients who have mild to severe arm weaknesses. Unlike other therapies currently on the NHS, gripAble™ is a low cost device which can be used in hospitals and independently by patients at home. As such it could potentially help save the health service millions of pounds

– Dr Paul Bentley

Senior Clinical Research Fellow

They found that 93 per cent of patients were able to make meaningful movements to direct the cursor as a result of using gripAble™.  In contrast, 67 per cent of patients were able to use mobile gaming devices by swiping on a tablet. For other types of control over the tablet, such as tapping or using joysticks, the number of patients able to make meaningful movements was lower.
The success of the device was most apparent for patients with severe arm weakness: no patients in this group were able to use conventional controls to play training games, whereas 58% could use gripAble™.
In a smaller sub-group the trial also demonstrated that severely disabled patients could play computer games that involve tracking a target with almost as good accuracy as healthy people.
The clinical trial was carried out at Charing Cross Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare Trust, between 2014 and 2015.  The team is now carrying out a feasibility study in North West London to test the use of the device in patients’ homes.
The potential of gripAble™ as a means of delivering cost-effective physiotherapy was recognised by a NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize in early 2016.
Lead researcher Dr Paul Bentley, who is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust , said: “In the UK 100,000 new cases of arm weaknesses are diagnosed each year following a stroke.  Often this impairs people’s ability to carry out daily activities, requiring long-term care. The use of mobile-gaming could provide a cost-effective and easily available means to improve the arm movements of stroke patients but in order to be effective patients of all levels of disability should be able to access it.
“We have developed the gripAble™ device to improve arm and cognitive function of patients who have mild to severe arm weaknesses.  Unlike other therapies currently on the NHS, gripAble™ is a low cost device which can be used in hospitals and independently by patients at home. As such it could potentially help save the health service millions of pounds. We now intend to further develop the device so we can help more patients who are currently suffering from the effects of poor arm and upper body mobility.”
The researchers collaborated with Human Robotics Group at Imperial College London to develop the device. The research is funded by the Imperial Confidence in Concept Award, the NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize, and the EU 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development grants.
To find out more about plans for the company and the current gripAble™ clinical trial please contact Dr Paul Rinne on paul.rinne@imperial.ac.uk.
Reference : Rinne P, Mace M, Nakornchai T, Zimmerman K, Fayer S, Sharma P, et al. (2016) Democratizing neurorehabilitation: how accessible are low-cost mobile-gaming technologies for self-rehabilitation of arm disability in stroke? PLoS ONE 11(10): e0163413. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163413
See the press release of this article