Music meets robotics: a prospective randomized study on motivation during robot aided therapy.
Kilian Baur, Florina Speth, Aniket Nagle and 2 others
PMID 30115082WHAT IT FOUND
Letting 16 healthy people choose and combine sounds in a robot arm game made the task more enjoyable and self-directed than following left/right commands.
Removing the screen did not change motivation. This was not stroke patients.
Key findings
01Creative sound tasks were rated more enjoyable and more self-directed than instruction-only tasks.
02Fourteen of sixteen healthy participants preferred the creative tasks.
03Removing the visual display did not affect motivation ratings.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The participants were 16 healthy, young, highly educated people, not stroke patients, so the findings do not show what would happen in rehabilitation. Each person performed only three of the four game conditions, and the authors say it is unclear whether the introduction round in the creative task with a screen confounded the results. The outcomes were motivation and movement measures in healthy adults, not stroke patient recovery. Without a visual display, the rules may not have been intuitively understood, and participants reported the task was challenging. The action space was restricted to horizontal movements, which may have limited movement freedom. The music was simple and mostly classical instruments, so preferences may not reflect broader patient tastes.
Declared interests
The named funders are Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (CH). No additional conflict statement is given.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that creative robot-assisted music improves stroke rehabilitation. The study used 16 healthy adults, measured motivation and movement measures, and the authors state the results cannot be directly transferred to patients.