Error-enhanced learning & recovery in 2 & 3 dimensions

对于中风幸存者来说，最普遍的问题之一是运动障碍。最近的研究表明 支持延长上肢功能相关活动的练习，即使治疗时间是 受到当前医疗经济体制的很大限制。这笔赠款侧重于人类-- 机器人交互(触觉)展示了在运动教学和康复领域的前景。 专门的机器人设备与计算机显示器相结合，可以不知疲倦地施力，增强反馈， 并重定向错误，以加速、增强或触发运动再学习过程。这些方法 可以延长并极大地加强恢复进程。 在教授动作时，人们经常想到的第一个策略是引导肢体沿着所需的方向运动。 路径。然而，一种有希望的替代方法是通过改变移动方向来使移动变得更加困难 从想要的路径开始。人们通过实践发展出对抗扭曲人类社会的力量的能力。 机械世界，如果这些力被适当地设计和应用，就会出现所需的运动模式 当这些力量最终被关闭时。我们和其他人也通过扭曲得到了类似的结果 使用棱镜或虚拟现实显示器的视觉世界。在这些研究中，受试者看到了一些东西 意想不到的被认为是错误的。我们的结果指向了一个统一的理论：错误导致学习， 明智的误差放大(通过力量或视觉扭曲)可以带来持久的预期变化。 有趣的是，这一过程似乎绕过了需要高强度学习的传统学习机制。 专注力--如果受试者在交谈或听音乐，结果是一样的。他们经常 就当这是场游戏吧。 到目前为止，这项研究很少有功能上的相关性，因为这些设备的运动范围 都是小的，是二维的，并且缺乏适当的视觉界面。三维 运动引入了令人望而生畏的重力效应的新挑战，这可能会减少(或者可能 提高)错误增强训练的潜力。我们的实验室花了几年时间开发了一种大型- 工作空间，三维触觉/图形系统。这笔赠款的目的是在我们承诺的基础上 并将我们的错误放大培训工作扩展到三个较大的工作空间 尺寸。因此，下面的实验进一步完善了我们对误差增强(AIM)的理解 1)，将我们的方法扩展到三维(目标2)，然后通过 在中风幸存者身上测试我们的方法(目标3)。

One of the most pervasive problems for stroke survivors is movement deficits. Recent research strongly supports prolonged practice of functionally-relevant activities of the upper limb, even though therapy time is quite limited by the current medical economic system. This grant focuses on new developments in human- robot interactions (haptics) that have revealed prospects in the areas of motor teaching and rehabilitation. Specialized robotic devices combined with computer-displays can tirelessly exert force, augment feedback, and redirect error in order to speed up, enhance, or trigger the motor relearning process. These approaches could extend and greatly enhance the recovery process. The first strategy that often comes to mind for teaching movements is to guide the limb along the desired path. However, a promising alternative approach is to make movements more difficult by deflecting them from the desired path. People develop, through practice, the ability to counteract forces that distort the mechanical world, and if these forces are properly designed and applied, a desired movement pattern occurs when the forces are eventually switched off. We and others have also obtained similar results by distorting the visual world using prisms or virtual reality displays. In these studies, the subject sees something unexpected that is perceived as an error. Our results point to a single unifying theory: Errors induce learning, and judicious error augmentation (through forces or visual distortions) can lead to lasting desired changes. Interestingly, this process appears to bypass conventional learning mechanisms that require intense concentration - results are the same if the subjects have a conversation or listen to music. They often consider it a game. Until now very little of this research has been functionally relevant because the devices' ranges of motion were small, were two dimensional, and were lacking an appropriate visual interface. Three dimensional movements introduce the daunting new challenge of gravitational effects that could reduce (or perhaps heighten) the potential of error augmentation training. Our lab has spent several years developing a large- workspace, three dimensional haptics/graphics system. The aims of this grant are to build on our promising body of evidence and expand our error augmentation training work to a large workspace in three dimensions. Accordingly, the experiments below further refine our understanding of error augmentation(Aim 1), expand our approaches to three dimensions (Aim 2), and then move towards clinical application by testing our approaches on stroke survivors (Aim 3).