Matching accuracy in hemiparetic cerebral palsy during unimanual and bimanual movements with (mirror) visual feedback

A Smorenburg, A. Ledebt, F. Deconinck, G.J.P. Savelsbergh

    Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    In the present study participants with Spastic Hemiparetic Cerebral Palsy (SHCP) were asked to match the position of a target either with the impaired arm only (unimanual condition) or with both arms at the same time (bimanual condition). The target was placed at 4 different locations scaled to the individual maximum reaching distance. To test the effect of mirror visual feedback of the less-impaired arm on the matching accuracy, an opaque screen or a mirror was placed in between the arms which masked vision of the impaired arm. Absolute endpoint error was smaller in the bimanual condition compared to the unimanual condition, but there was no effect of mirror visual feedback. Inspection of the individual data, however, showed that 13 out of 23 participants did experience a positive effect of mirror visual feedback. A positive correlation between the baseline error (screen) and the improvement in accuracy with mirror visual feedback seems to suggest that individuals with lower proprioceptive accuracy in the baseline condition may benefit more from mirror visual feedback. Together these findings indicate that bimanual therapy and therapy with mirror visual feedback might be valuable approaches for rehabilitation for a subset of the individuals with SHCP. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)2088-2089
    JournalResearch in Developmental Disabilities
    Volume33
    Issue number6
    Early online date7 Jul 2012
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

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