RESEARCH INITIATION AWARD: Investigating a new Generation of Assistive, Innovative Technologies (GAIT) for balance rehabilitation

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Research Initiation Awards provide support for faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building a research program. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at her home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to the University of the District of Columbia has potential broader and societal impact in a number of areas. The project seeks to explore a creative, novel, and potentially transformative sensory aid for elderly stroke survivors with the capacity to revolutionize rehabilitative and balance aid paradigms currently used. Undergraduate students will gain research experiences and are actively involved in the project.The overarching research goal is to obtain new scientific knowledge on the effects of a non-mechanically stabilizing cue using fingertip or light touch, as well as a multidirectional partial bodyweight support (NaviGAITor) aid, for balance rehabilitation of elderly participants who are stroke survivors. Participant standing balance, gait, functionality and multisensory reweighting, as well as how the visual, somatosensory, and vestibular sensory systems adapt to added sensory information to yield a postural response, will be assessed. The potential of utilizing light touch to serve as a long-term, permanent rehabilitation aid for elderly participants is a radically different approach than devices and methods currently used. Further, the research will investigate a distinctive NaviGAITor system that allows for multidirectional range of motion, as opposed to the traditional with-treadmill or straight-path walking partial bodyweight support approaches. The knowledge resulting from this research has the potential to benefit society in that it ultimately aims at reducing falls in elderly stroke survivors.