Relevant factors for arm choice in reaching movement: a scoping review.
Kento Hirayama, Yuki Ito, Toru Takahashi and 1 others
PMID 36507080WHAT IT FOUND
Arm choice in reaching tasks was associated with lower effort, higher success, hand dominance, and brain activity.
The included studies were mostly healthy adults, so this suggests rehabilitation targets to test, not proven treatments.
Key findings
01The review categorized 25 studies into cost, success, dominance, and brain activity factors.
02Weighting or resisting an arm reduced its choice rate.
03In an included stroke study, right hemiparetic patients continued to use the paretic arm after a failed reach, while left hemiparetic patients increased non-paretic arm choice.
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
This was a scoping review, not a systematic review, and the authors did not rate the quality of the included articles. The search included only English publications, so evidence in other languages may be missing. Most included studies were in healthy adults, and only two included studies involved patients with stroke. The review describes factors associated with arm choice. It does not test whether changing cost, success, dominance, or brain activity improves paretic arm use. The proposed stroke interventions, such as robots, virtual reality, and brain stimulation, were future suggestions rather than results from the reviewed studies.
Declared interests
This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 21K20293, 20H05482, 22H04785). The authors declared no conflicting interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as evidence that any rehabilitation method increases paretic arm use. The review described factors associated with arm choice in mostly healthy adults, and the stroke applications were future proposals, not tested interventions.