Sensory Substitution/Multisensory Correlation in Physical Rehabilitation Science

Assessing outcomes for extracorporeal orthotic and prosthetic clinical and technological intervention is fairly straight forward: just ask. Of course, the resulting subjective interpretation (ratings) might not fully capture or accurately reflect the underlining biological issues involved in physical restoration and rehabilitation of individuals with desensitized or missing limbs. Further, such subjective inquisition does not represent “hard” science, and the results of this method of inquiry will doubtlessly be less than wholly convincing to third party payers. A reproducible, consistent and (most importantly) predictable method for scientific testing or proving that any one intervention modality is preferable to any other needs to be developed. To do this, we need to find answers to the following questions. What are the underlining biological issues involved in physical restoration and rehabilitation? What makes a mechanical device biological, and what is the essential role of applied biomechanics in rehabilitation science? The answers to these questions lies in the understanding of how applied biomechanics and neural mechanisms interact to facilitate correlation of sensory perception skills with normal body imagery skills and the acquisition of sensorimotor skills necessary for the resulting optimal mechanical design and utilization of orthotic, prosthetic and robotics devices .