TOPIC

Neurological research

Everything we have read on neurological. Each paper is summarised from the full article rather than its abstract, so the limitations are in there too, and the funding wherever the paper declares it.

2,792 PAPERS · PAGE 54 OF 56 · NEWEST FIRST

• PTOTSurvey2026Pediatric Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy: Current Practices and Implementation Barriers.OTJR : occupation, participation and health75% of surveyed US paediatric providers said pCIMT was available in their region, but only 14% said every eligible child could actually get it. Cost, therapist and family availability were the top reported barriers, and academic programmes spend 0 to 1 hour on it.
• PTOTRCT2026Wearable Myoelectric Interface for Neurorehabilitation (MINT) to Recover Arm Activity After Stroke: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Neurorehabilitation and neural repairSix weeks of home training with a myoelectric arm game improved timed arm function by 6.8 seconds only in the group training three muscles at once. That group beat sham only in the per-protocol analysis; the main analysis found no group better than sham.
• PTOTOther2026Performance Quality Rating Scale for Somatosensation After Stroke Version 3: Reliability, Feasibility.OTJR : occupation, participation and healthA new 10-point scale rates how somatosensory loss after stroke shows up in activities a client chose. Two clinicians watching the same video agreed fairly well, with some disagreement. Four averaged together agreed very well. It got easier with practice.
• PTOTCohort2026Profiles of Quality of Life Outcomes Observed in Rehabilitation Patients Using Latent Profile Analysis.Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitationRehabilitation patients sorted into four quality-of-life patterns that cut across diagnosis, not by injury type: two groups doing well, one average group with pain, and the largest group (47%) with poor physical function and independence. No treatment was tested.
• PTOTOther2026Spinal cord neuromodulation for autonomic recovery following spinal cord injury: a scoping review.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitationSpinal cord stimulation may improve blood pressure, bladder, bowel and sexual function after spinal cord injury, but the evidence is small case series and cohort studies with no randomised trials. Some had blood pressure spikes, and benefits varied.
• PTOTSystematic Review2026Motivation in motor training interventions after stroke-a systematic review.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciencesOnly five of 17 trials of stroke motor training found gains on both motivation and motor performance. Many trials that claimed to be motivating never measured motivation, and every trial was rated at high risk of bias.
• OTRCT2026Cognitive Orientation to Daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) in Parkinson's: Randomized Trial Findings.Canadian journal of occupational therapy. Revue canadienne d'ergotherapieCO-OP occupational therapy improved self- and therapist-rated performance on goals chosen by people with Parkinson's compared with a waiting list, but a masked assessor's goal rating and measures of thinking, daily function, quality of life and self-efficacy showed no difference.
• PTOTRCT2026Dissociable effects of β-tACS on spectral power and network organization for proximal versus distal upper-limb recovery in subacute stroke: double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled trial with high-density EEG.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation20 Hz stimulation over the stroke-side motor cortex, added to the same physiotherapy and occupational therapy for ten sessions over two weeks, improved arm recovery more than sham. Gains were clearest for shoulder and elbow control, not the hand, and held at one month.
• PTOTQualitative2026Health Care Providers' Perspectives on a Hybrid Outpatient Stroke Telerehabilitation Program: Qualitative Implementation Study.JMIR rehabilitation and assistive technologiesClinicians in one hybrid stroke telerehabilitation program wanted the choice of video or in-person visits, saw video as useful for intake, goal-setting and discharge planning but not for hands-on balance and gait work, and said it suited more independent, better-connected patients.
• OTRCT2025Repetitive peripheral magnetic stimulation for hemiparetic hand edema in stroke patients: A randomized crossover trial.Hong Kong journal of occupational therapy : HKJOTTwo weeks of repetitive magnetic stimulation added to standard rehabilitation reduced hand swelling and improved knuckle bending in stroke patients with a severely paralysed hand. Sixteen people finished the study, all in one hospital, and nobody was blinded.
• PTOTOther2026Assessing and categorizing health-related quality of life outcomes in children and youth with acquired brain injury in outpatient rehabilitation.Journal of pediatric rehabilitation medicineYoung people referred to rehabilitation after acquired brain injury reported much lower quality of life than healthy Dutch peers, especially for school and work. Young adults fared worst. The authors propose cut-offs to make these scores quicker to interpret at intake.
• OTSystematic Review2026Screening Fitness to Drive After Stroke Across Demographic Subgroups: A Systematic Review.OTJR : occupation, participation and healthThe screening tests rated most useful for judging fitness to drive after stroke, the SDSA and Trail Making Test-B, were validated mainly in older men from high-income countries. Only 21% of participants were female.
• PTOTSystematic Review2026Mapping the Evidence on Cardiovascular Disease Risk among Individuals Experiencing Disability: A Scoping Review.American journal of physical medicine & rehabilitationThe evidence on heart attack and stroke risk in people with physical disabilities is sparse and too varied to guide practice. Most of the 38 studies were retrospective database studies from the US and East Asia, and stroke was the most studied outcome.
• PTOTOther2026Digital Platform to Provide Health Data Feedback for Neurorehabilitation Patients: User-Centered Development and Proof-of-Concept Usability Study.JMIR rehabilitation and assistive technologiesBoth patients and therapists preferred progress bars and color-coded summaries over text or spider plots when shown rehabilitation results in a co-designed app, and rated its usability highly (93.6 and 80.9 out of 100). It used fabricated data, so no clinical benefit is shown.
• OTSurvey2025Determinants of the number of ATDs used by community-dwelling people recovering from stroke with mild cognitive impairments: A path analysis.Hong Kong journal of occupational therapy : HKJOTIn 196 community-dwelling stroke survivors with normal to mild cognitive impairment, being older, more anxious, or more involved in daily activities went with using more assistive devices. Cognition did not predict how many devices someone used.
• OTMeta-Analysis2026Adaptive Interventions for Enhancing Participation Poststroke: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Canadian journal of occupational therapy. Revue canadienne d'ergotherapieAcross 24 randomised trials, adaptive goal-focused stroke programmes did not clearly improve participation. The one positive result was for everyday household activities in self-management style programmes. That was a secondary outcome.
• PTOTCohort2026Early post-hospital trajectories of health-related quality of life for younger adult patients with traumatic brain injury.Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitationMental quality of life did not improve over 8 weeks after hospital discharge for traumatic brain injury. Physical quality of life did improve, from 30.5 to 34.8 out of 100, still below the 43 to 47 the scale treats as low quality of life.
• PTOTSystematic Review2026Do Leg-Focused Exercises Improve Arm and Hand Function for Individuals With Neurologic Disorders? A Scoping Review.Archives of rehabilitation research and clinical translationLeg training came with better arm and hand function in half of 12 small studies; the other half found no change, and none found harm. Almost none of the studies actually tested this, so it is a research question, not a treatment.
• PTOTQualitative2026Life after the hospital: Lived experience of people with traumatic spinal cord injury in a resource-constrained setting - a qualitative study.The South African journal of physiotherapyFor these 19 Rwandans with spinal cord injury, losing income and their sense of value shaped daily life. Family support and contact with others with the same injury helped; inaccessible homes, ill-fitting donated wheelchairs and public attitudes kept people out.
• OTOther2026Understanding the Impact of Screening Location on Depressive Symptom Scores Among People With Spinal Cord Injury.Archives of rehabilitation research and clinical translationTotal depression scores did not differ significantly between people with new spinal cord injuries screened at home and in hospital (median 7.5 vs 6 on a 0-27 scale). Emotional symptoms and suicidal thoughts were more common at home.
• PTOTOther2026Quantification of Lower Extremity Dressing Movements in Patients With Stroke.Archives of rehabilitation research and clinical translationHow a stroke patient raises their trousers differs with how much help they need. Those needing supervision or hands-on help put much less weight through the affected leg and used different trunk and pelvic movement than those who were independent.
• PTOTMeta-Analysis2026Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Efficacy of Shorter Duration Modified Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (mCIMT) Programs.Archives of rehabilitation research and clinical translationLower-dose constraint-induced movement therapy (under 39 hours of supervised training plus at least 10 hours a day of restraint) improved arm function after chronic stroke in 5 trials, but only real-world arm use held up at follow-up. Evidence quality was rated very low.
• OTQualitative2025Devotion to Family: Coping Strategy to Reduce Burden of Caregiving Stroke Patients.Occupational therapy internationalIndonesian family caregivers of stroke survivors said pride, religious acceptance of fate and family duty kept them going through exhaustion, lost sleep, money worries, anger and fear. None were health workers; they learned caregiving by trial and error.
• OTSurvey2025Factors Influencing Return to Work Among Women With Acquired Brain Injury.Occupational therapy international61.2% of these women with acquired brain injury had returned to work. Each extra year of age made return less likely, while support from managers at work made it about five times more likely. Education, marital status and impairment did not predict return.
• PTOTQualitative2025What stroke survivors say about living with upper limb spasticity and how they manage it.Australian occupational therapy journalStroke survivors with upper limb spasticity described life as continuous adaptation: expecting, learning, practising, evaluating, moving forward. They devised their own strategies, such as a paint roller holder worn at night to keep the hand open, and chose what services and equipment to use.
• OTOther2025Development and initial psychometric properties of the timed upper limb assessment in older adults with Parkinson's.The British journal of occupational therapyA new 10-item timed hand and arm test took people with Parkinson's 22.2 seconds on average, against 16.8 seconds for controls, and times rose with disease stage. Two raters scored the same videos alike, but no one has yet re-tested the same person.
• OTQualitative2026Qualitative Analysis of User Experiences of a mHealth Self-Care Intervention for Care Partners of Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury.Archives of rehabilitation research and clinical translationIn interviews, care partners of people with traumatic brain injury said the app's self-care prompts raised their awareness but often arrived at times they could not act, and its dashboard scores confused them. Technical glitches lost data and notifications.
• OTOther2026Variability of the Behavioral Assessment Screening Tool for Mobile Health Using Ecological Momentary Assessment in Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury.Archives of rehabilitation research and clinical translationPrompting adults with chronic TBI daily, every other day or at random made no difference to how much their symptoms swung. Day to day, fatigue varied most and substance misuse least, and people fell into three groups by how stable their reports were.
• PTOTMeta-Analysis2026Effects of hydrokinesitherapy on balance and walking ability for stroke survivors: update of a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies.European journal of physical and rehabilitation medicineWater-based exercise improved stroke survivors' balance on some tests but not others: Berg Balance Scale scores improved by a moderate amount, while the Timed Up and Go did not. Evidence was insufficient for walking ability or daily activities.
• PTOTSurvey2026Living with spinal cord injury in the community of Bangladesh: a comprehensive analysis using the ICF framework.Journal of rehabilitation medicinePeople with tetraplegia reported worse function, more environmental barriers and lower confidence than those with paraplegia in a survey of 789 adults with spinal cord injury in Bangladesh. Pain, muscle tone problems, poor sleep and low mood were common in both groups.
• OTSystematic Review2026Occupational Therapy Neurorehabilitation Practice in Middle East and North Africa (MENA): A Scoping Review.Occupational therapy internationalOccupational therapists across this region work inside multidisciplinary teams, and almost all the research is about stroke. Two gaps stand out: almost no study assesses how cognitive problems affect real daily tasks, and home safety assessment is absent.
• PTOTSystematic Review2025Effectiveness of psychoeducational intervention in promoting post-stroke self-care: a systematic literature review.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciencesHalf of the eight trials found no improvement in their main outcome after psychoeducation was added to stroke rehabilitation; the other half reported better self-care, self-efficacy, quality of life or caregiver burden. No trial tested education alone, and results could not be pooled.
• PTOTMeta-Analysis2025Effect of virtual reality-based upper limb training on activity of daily living and quality of life among stroke survivors: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitationAdding game-based virtual reality to stroke upper limb rehabilitation, or using it on its own, improved daily activity scores more than conventional therapy alone, and immersive headsets did better than screens. Quality-of-life results look bigger but rest on only eight trials.
• PTOTSystematic Review2025Upper limb motor recovery in chronic stroke-longitudinal aggregate analysis from control group outcomes.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciencesIn chronic stroke, control groups given general exercise rather than targeted arm therapy gained 0.9 points on the 66-point Fugl-Meyer arm scale, well short of the 4.25 to 7.25 points that marks a real change.
• PTOTRCT2025A Randomized Control Trial of a Virtually Delivered Program for Increasing Upper Limb Activity After Stroke.Neurorehabilitation and neural repairA three-week virtual upper limb programme (twice-daily home exercises, a wrist-worn movement counter with feedback, and six therapist video sessions) produced 368 more reach-and-grasp movements a day than usual care at four weeks. The difference only just reached significance (P = .046).
• PTOTMeta-Analysis2023Prevalence and risks factors of caregiving-related low back pain among caregivers of stroke survivors: a systematic review and meta-analysis.European journal of physical and rehabilitation medicineAbout half of people caring for a stroke survivor get low back pain from caregiving (53.9% pooled across the 5 included studies). In the pooled analysis, men and women did not differ significantly, and neither did partial and complete caregivers.
• PTOTRCT2022Efficacy and feasibility of SENSory relearning of the UPPer limb (SENSUPP) in people with chronic stroke: A pilot randomized controlled trial.PM & R : the journal of injury, function, and rehabilitationAdding sensory relearning to task-specific training improved touch thresholds more than task training alone in 27 people with chronic stroke, but no other measure differed between the groups. Both groups improved in daily hand use, and the trial was too small to confirm benefit.
• OTRCT2023Acceptance and commitment therapy for individuals with depressive and anxiety symptoms following acquired brain injury: A non-concurrent multiple baseline design across four cases.Neuropsychological rehabilitationThree of four adults with depression or anxiety after stroke or TBI improved on daily mood ratings during eight sessions of ACT, and their gains held a year later. The fourth did not improve, and his questionnaire scores later rose above his starting point.
• OTRCT2023A short add-on sleep intervention in the rehabilitation of individuals with acquired brain injury: A randomized controlled trial.NeuroRehabilitationAdding a short sleep programme to usual rehabilitation improved sleep quality far more than usual rehabilitation alone: mean scores, where higher is worse, fell from 10.65 to 6.09 against 11.11 to 10.44. Fatigue, anxiety and depression did not differ between groups.
• OTSystematic Review2022Remote Assessments of Hand Function in Neurological Disorders: Systematic Review.JMIR rehabilitation and assistive technologiesRemote tools show promise for measuring hand function, but none is yet valid and reliable across Parkinson's disease, stroke and MS. Finger tapping and hand tremor matched in-clinic scores best. Most reported links to clinic measures were not significant, and few studies checked reliability.
• PTOTSystematic Review2022Feasibility, Acceptability, and Efficacy of Mindfulness Training in People With Upper Motor Neuron Disorders: A Systematic Review.Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitationIn MS, brain injury, spinal cord injury and ALS, 85% of people who started a mindfulness programme finished it, and satisfaction averaged 4.6 out of 5. Depression, anxiety and fatigue fell, but far less when the comparison group got another active treatment.
• OTRCT2024AppReminders - a pilot feasibility randomized controlled trial of a memory aid app for people with acquired brain injury.Neuropsychological rehabilitationRecruitment, retention and app use all fell short of the trial's own targets, and overall memory scores did not change. On the daily memory log alone, scores in the ApplTree group rose 13% while the Google Calendar group's did not change.
• OTRCT2022Spatial exploration strategy training for spatial neglect: A pilot study.Neuropsychological rehabilitationA single 20-to-30-minute session of guided practice helped people with left-sided neglect after right-brain stroke search more evenly on both sides, and judge their own performance better. It did not increase the total number of objects they found.
• OTRCT2022VR-based cognitive rehabilitation for children with traumatic brain injuries: Feasibility and safety.Rehabilitation psychologyA VR cognitive training game was safe and doable for children with TBI. Twenty-six children stuck with their assigned game, over 80% completed all measures, and the two who stopped for eye strain or headache recovered. Thinking-skill scores did not improve significantly.
• PTOTSystematic Review2025Effects of electrical and magnetic stimulation on upper extremity function after stroke: A systematic review and network meta-analysis.PM & R : the journal of injury, function, and rehabilitationCombining repetitive peripheral magnetic stimulation with electrical stimulation ranked highest for upper limb recovery after stroke, ahead of electrical stimulation alone, but confidence is very low and spasticity did not improve with any of these treatments.
• PTOTMeta-Analysis2023Comparison of Different Rehabilitation Techniques of Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine in the Treatment of Motor Dysfunction After Stroke Based on Frequency Method: A Network Meta-analysis.American journal of physical medicine & rehabilitationAdded to routine stroke rehabilitation, biofeedback, acupuncture and virtual reality beat routine therapy alone on movement, balance and hand function scores. Most comparisons between therapies showed no significant difference and the authors say the rankings are only for reference.
• OTRCT2022A randomized control trial of the effects of home-based online attention training and working memory training on cognition and everyday function in a community stroke sample.Neuropsychological rehabilitationFour weeks of daily home-based attention or working memory training did not improve spatial bias or any standardised cognitive test in 80 community stroke survivors. Only participants' ratings of memory, concentration and mood favoured attention training, but the researcher collecting those ratings knew the groups.
• OTMeta-Analysis2024Efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapy for neuropsychiatric symptoms among patients with Parkinson's disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical rehabilitationAcupuncture added to medication or brain stimulation improved depression, anxiety, cognition and quality of life scores in people with Parkinson's disease. Acupuncture on its own worked no better than sham or no treatment, and fatigue did not improve.
• PTOTMeta-Analysis2024Upper extremity function and disability recovery with vibration therapy after stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitationAdding vibration to usual stroke rehabilitation improved arm and hand movement and daily independence across 30 trials in 1,621 people. Most participants also received standard therapy, so how much the vibration itself contributed is unclear, and benefits faded beyond three months.
• PTOTRCT2021Corticospinal Tract Microstructure Predicts Distal Arm Motor Improvements in Chronic Stroke.Journal of neurologic physical therapy : JNPTIn chronic stroke with mild-to-moderate arm weakness, people whose corticospinal tract looked more damaged at baseline improved more on a timed hand and arm test after four months of practice. That reversed what the authors expected. Do not use imaging to pick who to treat.