A Robotic Arm to Help Neurology Patients

Soon, software and hardware will be available for tailor-made rehabilitation programs for people suffering from neurological disorders including stroke/paralysis, epilepsy, dementia and Parkinson's disease. Pratik Mutha, an assistant professor of biological engineering and cognitive science at Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (IIT-Gn) has taken up a research project to study abnormalities in the movement patterns of neurological patients so that specific tools can be designed to enhance their rehabilitation.

What's more, robotic devices and other technologies are also being developed which will be used in assisting these patients in re-learning their movement behaviour. Mutha said that project will understand brain mechanisms that mediate the control of motor actions, and what happens when this control breaks down. Mutha has also got government of India's Ramanujan fellowship for the project. the project, when completed, promises to give better information and tools to experts to train the patients to be on their own.

"My interest in the subject started during my doctoral and post-doctoral studies in the US where I studied movement problems in patients with neurological disorders. Our contemporary thinking says that a network of neurological regions in both hemispheres of the brain enables humans to learn and perform actions. This network can be compared to a computer network where one node passes information to another and so on. In case of neurological disorders such as stroke, one or more such nodes get damaged and this delicate architecture for movement control gets disrupted," he said. The research focuses on the rehabilitation of such patients, in which they devise strategies involving robotics, virtual reality and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques. For this purpose, Mutha has collaborated with a city-based neurologist Dr Swati Shah. Dr Shah said that the team is studying abnormalities in a number of movement aspects such as its direction, accuracy and speed. "Such kind of research is important to provide tailor-made rehabilitation programs for people suffering from different neurological diseases".

"When it comes to rehabilitating such patients, an array of techniques has been shown to be more effective than just a single one. Computer-aided techniques that can be altered with the patient's response and progress have been shown to be effective in western countries. Experts are predicting a very rapid rise in neurological disorders in countries like India in the near future, and so it is an apt time to think about what can be done so that their recovery is enhanced," said Mutha.