Activity Based Rehabilitation (ABR) to restore changes in the central nervous system and in trunk muscle function following spinal cord injury: TRUNK CONTROL
Imperial College London, Award: £103,828, Date of Award: April 2015
It is a challenge for people with incomplete mid-thoracic spinal cord injury (SCI) to keep their upper body stable in order to carry out tasks using the arms, such as dressing, transferring and locomotion using wheelchairs. Poor trunk control consequently has deleterious effects on activities of daily living and independence. Although there is a growing appreciation among clinicians and patients as to the functional association between the trunk and upper limbs, the underlying mechanism and neural pathways involved remain largely unexplored. This project aims to extend our work on healthy subjects to investigate the extent to which upper limb tasks are able to facilitate the neural pathways controlling the trunk muscles after SCI and to reveal the mechanisms involved. We will assess whether such facilitation is retained after exercise-based repetitions of the task and finally, whether this leads to functional improvements in trunk control, such as sitting balance and reaching.