Effects of Physical Rehabilitation Integrated with Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation on Spatio-Temporal and Kinematic Parameters of Gait in Parkinson’s Disease

Two earlier articles on using this for stroke. I can guarantee your doctor has done absolutely nothing to incorporate this into a stroke protocol for you.

Metronome Cueing of Walking Reduces Gait Variability after a Cerebellar Stroke July 2016

Rhythmic Auditory Cueing in Motor Rehabilitation for Stroke Patients: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis April 2016

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fneur.2016.00126/full?

Massimiliano Pau¹*^†, Federica Corona¹, Roberta Pili², Carlo Casula³, Fabrizio Sors⁴, Tiziano Agostini⁴, Giovanni Cossu³, Marco Guicciardi⁵ and Mauro Murgia^4,5†

• ¹Department of Mechanical, Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
• ²Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
• ³AOB “G. Brotzu” General Hospital, Cagliari, Italy
• ⁴Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
• ⁵Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, Philosophy, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

Movement rehabilitation by means of physical therapy represents an essential tool in the management of gait disturbances induced by Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this context, the use of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) has been proven useful in improving several spatio-temporal parameters, but concerning its effect on gait patterns, scarce information is available from a kinematic viewpoint. In this study, we used three-dimensional gait analysis based on optoelectronic stereophotogrammetry to investigate the effects of 5 weeks of supervised rehabilitation, which included gait training integrated with RAS on 26 individuals affected by PD (age 70.4 ± 11.1, Hoehn and Yahr 1–3). Gait kinematics was assessed before and at the end of the rehabilitation period and after a 3-month follow-up, using concise measures (Gait Profile Score and Gait Variable Score, GPS and GVS, respectively), which are able to describe the deviation from a physiologic gait pattern. The results confirm the effectiveness of gait training assisted by RAS in increasing speed and stride length, in regularizing cadence and correctly reweighting swing/stance phase duration. Moreover, an overall improvement of gait quality was observed, as demonstrated by the significant reduction of the GPS value, which was created mainly through significant decreases in the GVS score associated with the hip flexion–extension movement. Future research should focus on investigating kinematic details to better understand the mechanisms underlying gait disturbances in people with PD and the effects of RAS, with the aim of finding new or improving current rehabilitative treatments.

Introduction

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder traditionally attributed to the progressive degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra and, more recently, of other non-dopaminergic systems of basal ganglia and of other regions of the central nervous system (1–3). Although PD patients report both motor and non-motor symptoms, the former (tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, postural instability, and gait disturbance) have a huge impact on daily activities and may severely reduce the patients’ quality of life. In particular, the management of gait disorders, which are frequently encountered in PD, is of crucial importance because, as the disease progresses, they result in immobility (which causes loss of independence) and risk of falling (4).

Individuals with PD typically exhibit a gait pattern characterized by short stride length, increased cadence, and reduced velocity (5), which tends to further deteriorate with the progression of the disease (6). For this reason, pharmacological therapies are not sufficient to adequately deal with gait impairments and physical therapy is essential to cope with the deterioration in motor functions. Within the physical therapy domain, in the mid-1990s the efficacy of a therapy associated with rhythmic sounds, called Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) (7), proved to be successful.

The rationale underpinning the effectiveness of RAS interventions lies in the origin of the gait disturbance in PD. The simultaneous activation and relaxation of many muscles in a coordinated way with very high temporal precision is necessary to perform a fluent gait. In healthy humans, this process is generally performed automatically. In PD patients, the cognitive mechanisms responsible for automatically processing the temporal coordination of movements – which typically involve basal ganglia – are somehow impaired (8, 9). Indeed, empirical evidence suggests that the “internal clock” that regulates both perceptual and motor processes is affected by PD (10, 11). As a consequence, patients affected by PD generally perform poorly in cognitive tasks involving temporal processing and in the execution of automatic cycling movements, such as walking. To cope with this impairment, interventions based on RAS provide patients with an auditory temporal guidance, which facilitates the regulation of their movements while walking (12).

In one of the first studies of RAS by Thaut and colleagues (7), the researchers randomly assigned patients to one of three conditions: RAS training, internally self-paced training and no training. Even though the analysis of spatio-temporal parameters revealed improvements in both training conditions, the patients assigned to the RAS condition had significantly better results in gait velocity, stride length, and step cadence compared to the other two conditions. In the subsequent years, researchers manipulated important parameters of the original training protocol [for recent reviews, see Ref. (9, 12, 13)]. For instance, some studies investigated the immediate effects of RAS in real-time imitation tasks [e.g., Ref. (14, 15)], while other studies manipulated the duration of the training program (i.e., number of weeks, number of sessions, duration of each session), the stimuli (i.e., tempo and type of sounds), and exercises [e.g., Ref. (8, 16–23)]. Overall, the majority of these studies confirmed the efficacy of rehabilitation accompanied by RAS, in particular in terms of spatio-temporal parameters of gait (18, 19, 22, 24–26).

It is noteworthy that the effects of RAS on gait patterns of people with PD were usually assessed by analyzing changes that occurred within spatio-temporal parameters, such as velocity, cadence, and stride length (9), while other important aspects, such as kinematic parameters (i.e., joint angular displacements at ankle, knee, hip, and pelvis districts) remained mostly unexplored. The only exception is represented by the study carried out by Picelli et al. (27) who investigated the effects of cued walking at different cadences on spatio-temporal and kinematic parameters of gait, finding that auditory cues are able to improve gait through modifications of motor strategies. The fact that kinematics has been rarely investigated is quite surprising, considering that previous studies recognized the importance of investigating the kinematic profiles of gait patterns in people with PD (28). In fact, this analysis allows the identification of a number of distinctive features (i.e., flat foot contact, reductions in the range of hip extension in mid-stance, knee flexion in swing, and plantarflexion at toe push-off) (28) which are crucial when the effects of neurosurgical, pharmacological, and rehabilitative treatments must be assessed (13).

The literature reports few attempts to investigate the effectiveness of rehabilitative treatments integrated with RAS through kinematic analysis of gait in other kinds of neurological diseases, such as stroke or cerebral palsy (29–31). In particular, two studies (30, 31) assess the overall deviation from a physiologic gait pattern from a kinematic point of view using the gait deviation index (GDI), a multivariate measure of overall gait pathology based on a set of features extracted from kinematic data (32). In both cases, RAS was found to have a beneficial effect on kinematic as well as on spatio-temporal gait patterns.

Thus, on the basis of the aforementioned considerations, this study aimed to assess the effect on gait patterns of 5 weeks of rehabilitative treatment that included gait training assisted by RAS. We hypothesized that a rehabilitative protocol integrated with RAS would improve not only the spatio-temporal parameters of gait, but also the kinematics. Moreover, to investigate the possible persistence of training effects, we performed a follow-up assessment 3 months after the end of the treatment.

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