Computer-aided and Mental Trainings Induced Plasticity of Sensorimotor Cortex in Patients Born Without Upper Limbs

Summary

This project will explore a potentially powerful trainings that may be administered before upper extremity transplantation to induced plasticity of sensorimotor cortex in humans with congenital absence of upper limbs. We believe that engaging this population to computer-aided and/or mental trainings would facilitate structural and functional reorganization of the brain to promote motor function recovery.

Conditions

• Amelia of Upper Limb

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Mental trainings

Patients will receive 36 trainings (12 weeks with 3 trainings a week) of mental, kinesthetic reaching-to-grasp movement. During each training session they will perform 3 practice trials by following the instructions, after practicing 3 trials, the instructions will be discontinued, and subjects will perform 30 mental movements by following auditory cues.

BEHAVIORAL

Computer-aided trainings

Patients will receive 36 trainings (12 weeks with 3 trainings a week) of visual feedback of reaching-to-grasp movement. During each training session they will be sitting on a chair, in front of a computer screen observing simple tasks of reaching and precision fine grasping of a small object with 4 fingers of virtual upper extremity using the visualization software that will be coded specifically for the purpose of this experiment.

BEHAVIORAL

Computer-aided and mental trainings

Patients will receive 36 trainings (12 weeks with 3 trainings a week) of mental, kinesthetic reaching-to-grasp movement that will be supplemented by visual feedback of this task by the visualization software that will be coded specifically for the purpose of this experiment (they will receive trainings that link the features of the two mentioned above types of training (MT and CAT).

OTHER

No trainings

Healthy controls without any kind of training

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Wrocław University of Science and Technology

  collaborator OTHER

• Kessler Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Hospital of St. Hedwig in Trzebnica

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Wroclaw University of Health and Sport Sciences

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Katarzyna Kisiel-Sajewicz, PhD · Wroclaw University of Health and Sport Sciences

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

25 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-03-11

Primary Completion

2016-09-09

Completion

2019-12-31

Countries

• Poland

Study Locations