Purpose

An increasing number of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of motor-imagery (MI) for promoting neuro-motor re-learning in post-stroke patients [1-2]. When a subject mentally rehearse a movement, the central and peripheral neuro-motor pathways involved in the generation of that movement are reinforced. Anyway, re-learning processes are based on the continuous integration of motor efferences and sensorial afferences. One main limit of MI relies in the absence of sensorial afferences. An idea to increase the rehabilitation benefits of MI could be to use functional electrical stimulation (FES) to provide the sensorial afferences of the imagined movements. The aim of our study was to design a novel rehabilitation method for stroke patients in which MI of the grasping movement is detected by a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system and used to trigger the electrical stimulation of the muscles involved in the same movement. Pfurtscheller et al developed a system of MI-based BCI in which the MI of the movement of one hand triggered the stimulation of the other during grasping [3]. In our study the matching between the imagined and executed movement could enhance the rehabilitation benefits of both MI and FES facilitating the motor re-learning process. In this preliminary study we performed a methodology evaluation on 2 healthy subjects