Innovative Project from Católica takes a step towards neurorehabilitation

A research team from Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto received an exoskeleton (i.e. robotic legs) for rehabilitation studies in people with neurological diseases. Miguel Pais-Vieira, researcher at Centro de Investigação Interdisciplinar em Saúde (CIIS), states that "the use of exoskeletons for locomotion is in its early stages, and in Portugal there is a very small number of such devices".

The novelty of the study, which involves members of Centro de Investigação Interdisciplinar em Saúde (Miguel Pais-Vieira, Carla Pais-Vieira and Mehrab Khazraei; CIIS) and Centro de Investigação de Ciência e Tecnologia das Artes (André Perrotta, CITAR), is not only the use of an exoskeleton. In this case, the importance of the study lies in the fact that the exoskeleton will be directly controlled by the brain activity of the user. In other words, the user will only have to think about walking and the brain commands recorded through EEG (electroencephalography) will be decoded in real time serving as an instruction for the exoskeleton to start walking. In previous studies it was demonstrated that this combination of techniques (which in this case will still be complemented with virtual reality and tactile and thermal feedback) can lead to significant improvements in cases of spinal cord injury.

The project is innovative because it will combine advances in robotics, art technology, neuroscience, psychology, protein analysis and rehabilitation into a single rehabilitation protocol. Thus, the realization of this project will allow two important steps to be taken:

1. to replicate recent technological advances, bringing this new technology to the country;
2. determine whether the introduction of new variables can lead to an improvement in the rehabilitation protocol.

The consortium, which has joined efforts to achieve this goal, is composed of members from Universidade Católica Portuguesa (CIIS/ICS, Escola das Artes, FMD), Universidade do Minho (ICVS, Centro Algoritmi), Guimarães Hospital, Braga Hospital, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil) and Santos Dumont Institute (Brazil). Support for this project comes from FCT, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, Fundação Bial, Norte 2020, as well as the private company ExoAtlet.

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