# Stroke Rehabilitation utilizing BCI technology

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2020 · $512,926

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Each year nearly 800,000 people suffer a new or recurrent stroke in the United States. Approximately 85%
of these patients survive and require rehabilitation making it the leading cause of long-term disability in the
U.S. Approximately 4 million Americans are living with the effects of stroke and millions of
family/friends are caregivers. The estimated direct and indirect costs of stroke continue to escalate (e.g. in
2003 was $57 billion, 2008 was $65.5 billion, and for 2010 is estimated to be $73.7 billion). The mean
lifetime cost of ischemic stroke in the US is estimated at $140,048, including inpatient care, rehab, and
follow-up care. The majority of stroke costs are towards long-term care and rehabilitation (>
$100,000/patient). Stroke rehabilitation in the latter stages of stroke is limited because most health care
insurance pays only for limited rehabilitation visits (12-24 outpatient rehabilitation visits). Yet there is room
for improvement in terms of decreasing morbidity and improving functional independence in these stroke
patients, given that 1/3 of patients have some type of residual deficits.
Although there are already several rehabilitation techniques aimed at stroke recovery including
traditional physical-occupational-speech therapy, novel therapies such as constraint-induced movement
therapy, robot- aided therapy, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), virtual reality (VR), a number of
these suffer from issues of passive movement repetition, large equipment, personnel/time constraints,
and high costs. Furthermore few harness brain plasticity to derive therapeutic interventions.
The recommendations from the 2009 workshop sponsored by the NIH blueprint for neuroscience
research heralded the translation of neuroplasticity as key to developing guidelines for effective clinical
therapies in rehabilitation.
Aim 1: To investigate the efficacy of BCI-FES vs. standard FES(current standard of care), as measured
by changes in behavioral measures in stroke patients.
A more recent development has been the use of a more active rehabilitation approach that harnesses
brain plasticity in which brain thoughts inferred by EEG-based Brain Computer Interface (BCI)system are
linked to functional electrical stimulation (FES) of the muscles to replace or assist function that is lost in
neurologically impaired individuals. In recent animal and human studies, active stimulation by
coordinating central brain activation with peripheral movement has been shown to elicit greater functional
recovery than passive stimulation or peripheral movements. This is presumably through the faster
formation of latent plastic neural circuits between central and periphery which an active approach would
foster. This proposal investigates this novel BCI technology that adopts an active intervention approach,
non-invasive and aims to facilitate recovery after brain injury by restoring brain function while improving
corresponding motor function.
Aims 2 & 3: To track b...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9971600
- **Project number:** 5R01NS105646-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** Vivek Prabhakaran
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $512,926
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-01 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9971600

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9971600, Stroke Rehabilitation utilizing BCI technology (5R01NS105646-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9971600. Licensed CC0.

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