LAUSR

A large number of electroencephalogram-based brain-machine interface (BMI) systems developed by industry and academia are now available for neurorehabilitation. However, the lack of phase 1–2 clinical trials for BMI interventions to post-stroke hemiplegia has been limited their treatment outcome. To test the safety and feasibility of BMI interventions, we conducted trials with a customly developed BMI system for patients with acute/subacute hemiparetic stroke. Four inpatients participated in this study in the early phase (7–24 days from stroke onset). Our portable BMI system fed back the amplitude of sensorimotor rhythms extracted from scalp electroencephalograms in real time. On average, 120–200 training trials of the hand motor task were successfully conducted for 3.3 days (range 2–4 days) at bedside without any adverse effects. The results clearly showed that the portable BMI system was safe and feasible, and also demonstrated electrophysiological plasticity in the damaged hemisphere via interaction with BMI technology in patients with hemiparetic stroke in the acute/subacute phases.