Department of Neuromotor behavior and exercise gets “collaboration grant”
The Collaboration Grants are each worth 80,000 euros and they run for twelve months. The Universities of Münster and Twente share the funding equally. Financial support goes for example to workshops for setting up new consortia or networking events with industrial partners and companies. Over and above this, the money can be used for purchasing new equipment and research instruments.
Title: “Study of vibrotactile cueing by means of vibrating socks in a virtual environment to mitigate any gait freezing in Parkinson patients”
Project team: Prof. Claudia Voelcker-Rehage, Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Münster, Prof. Ciska Heida, Biomedical Signals and Systems at the University of Twente
Parkinson patients’ gait can be marked by ‘freezing’, which severely restricts mobility. So far, medication has not provided adequate treatment. However, so-called ‘cueing’ seems to be an effective method. Here, external (rhythmic) temporal or spatial cues are used to initiate or continue a movement. Something that is particularly promising is the use of vibrotactile signals: when freezing occurs, the patient gets a tactile cue, for example through a vibrating element worn on the ankle. A reduction in cognitive and motor performance in everyday life may be a negative side-effect, though. In this current project, the team is studying the effect of vibrotactile signals on cognitive and motor performance in everyday life. This takes place in virtual reality, a virtual real-time gait analysis system (GRAIL). The aim is to demonstrate the effectiveness of “vibrating socks” in realistic scenarios – especially in comparison with other (visual or auditory) cueing systems. The long-term aim is to develop commercial medical applications.
