"A Wearable Ring-shaped Inertial System to Identify Action Planning Impairments During Reach-to-grasp Sequences: A Pilot Study"

Abstract

Background. The progressive ageing of the population is leading to an increasing of people affected by cognitive decline, included disorders in executive functions (EFs), such as action planning. Current procedures to evaluate cognitive decline are based on neuropsychological tests, but novel methods and approaches start to be investigated. Reach-to-grasp (RG) protocols have shown that intentions can influence the EFs of action planning.Methods. In this work, we proposed a novel ring-shaped wearable inertial device, SensRing, to measure kinematic parameters during RG and after-grasp tasks with different end-goals. The aim is to evaluate whether SensRing can characterize the motor performances of people affected by Mild Neurocognitive Disorder (MND) with impairment in EFs, named dysexecutive MND (d-MND), compared to older healthy subjects (HC). Ten HC and eight d-MND were asked to reach and grasp a can with three different intentions: to drink (DRINK), to place it on a target (PLACE), or to pass it to a partner (PASS). Twenty-one kinematic parameters have been extracted from SensRing inertial data.Results. Several parameters resulted able to differentiate between HC and d-MND, showing that patients generally have longer reaction times, slower peak velocities and longer deceleration phases. Furthermore, d-MND showed fewer differences among conditions, suggesting that impairments in EFs influence their capabilities into modulating the action planning based on the end-goal.Conclusions. Therefore, the system can be proposed for objectifying the clinical assessment of people affected by d-MND by administering an easy quick motor test. Furthermore, the portability, wearability, accuracy, and ease-of use of the system make the SensRing sytem suitable for remote applications at home, including analysis of protocols for neuromotor rehabilitation in patients affected by MND.