Background. Action observation therapy and mirror therapy, two promising rehabilitation strategies, are aimed at enhancing the motor learning and functional improvement of stroke patients through different patterns of visual feedback and observation. Objective. This study investigated and compared the treatment effects of the action observation therapy, mirror therapy, and active control intervention on motor and functional outcomes of stroke patients. Methods. Twenty-one patients with subacute stroke were recruited in this study. All patients were randomly assigned to the action observation therapy, mirror therapy, or active control intervention for 3 weeks. Outcome measures were conducted at baseline, immediately after treatment, and at 3-month follow-up. The primary outcome was the Fugl-Meyer Assessment, and secondary outcomes included the Box and Block Test, Functional Independence Measure, and Stroke Impact Scale. Descriptive analyses and the number of patients whose change score achieved minimal clinically important difference were reported. Results. Both the action observation therapy and active control intervention showed similar improvements on the Fugl-Meyer Assessment, Box and Block Test, and Stroke Impact Scale. Moreover, the action observation therapy had a greater improvement on the Functional Independence Measure than the other 2 groups did. However, the mirror therapy group gained the least improvements on the outcomes. Conclusion. The preliminary results found that the patients in the action observation therapy and active control intervention groups had comparable benefits, suggesting that the 2 treatments might be used as an alternative to each other. A further large-scale study with at least 20 patients in each group to validate the study findings is needed. This trial is registered with NCT02871700.

Study design: A retrospective, follow-up study. Objectives: To di erentiate the injury pattern and survival of people with cervical cord injuries with onset at di erent ages. Setting: Rehabilitation wards of a university hospital that is a tertiary referral center in Taipei, Taiwan. Methods: The records of acute and traumatic cervical cord injury patients hospitalized from 1989 to 1997 were reviewed. All subjects received comprehensive rehabilitation programs during hospitalization. Their survival status at the end of follow-up was studied. Results: Forty-seven of 109 (43.1%) people with cervical cord injuries were 50 years or older at onset. Older patients were more frequently injured by minor falls, resulting in more incomplete quadriplegia. They also showed fewer spinal fractures, and more demonstrated associated spondylosis and ossi®cation of the posterior longitudinal ligament. Eleven (10.2%) subjects were deceased, found by a linkage to a death registration database at the end of follow-up. The signi®cant predictor of survival status at follow-up was older age at injury using Cox proportional hazards model. Conclusion: Spinal cord injured patients had di erent injury patterns, demanding di erent preventative strategies. Those injured at older ages were at higher risk of mortality according to our study.

Both action observation (AO) and virtual reality (VR) provide visual stimuli to trigger brain activations during the observation of actions. However, the mechanism of observing video movements performed by a person’s real hand versus that performed by a computer graphic hand remains uncertain. We aimed to investigate the differences in observing the video of real versus computer graphic hand movements on primary motor cortex (M1) activation by magnetoencephalography. Twenty healthy adults completed 3 experimental conditions: the resting state, the video of real hand movements (VRH), and the video of computer graphic hand movements (CGH) conditions with the intermittent electrical stimuli simultaneously applied to the median nerve by an electrical stimulator. The beta oscillatory activity (~20 Hz) in the M1 was collected, lower values indicating greater activations. To compare the beta oscillatory activities among the 3 conditions, the Friedman test with Bonferroni correction (p-value < 0.017 indicating statistical significance) were used. The beta oscillatory activities of the VRH and CGH conditions were significantly lower than that of the resting state condition. No significant difference in the beta oscillatory activity was found between the VRH and CGH conditions. Observing hand movements in a video performed by a real hand and those by a computer graphic hand evoked comparable M1 activations in healthy adults. This study provides some neuroimaging support for the use of AO and VR in rehabilitation, but no differential activations were found.

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