Enhancing recovery from stroke with effective rehabilitation interventions remains an elusive goal. Although intensive rehabilitation therapies such as constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) show promise, the intervention has not been deployed in routine clinical practice. Slow uptake of CIMT in routine clinical practice has been attributed to its large demand on professional resources and ...

A new therapeutic approach to rehabilitation of movement after stroke, termed Constraint-Induced (CI) Movement Therapy, has been derived from basic research with monkeys given somatosensory deafferentation. CI consists of a family of therapies; their common element is that they induce stroke patients to greatly increase the use of a more affected upper extremity for many hours a day over a 10-1...

Background and Purpose—Although constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) has been shown to improve upper extremity function in stroke survivors at both early and late stages after stroke, the comparison between participants within the same cohort but receiving the intervention at different time points has not been undertaken. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare functional impr...

Constraint-induced movement therapy (CI therapy) is a rehabilitation treatment approach that improves more-affected extremity use following a stroke, especially in the life situation. The originators of the approach describe CI therapy as consisting of a family of therapies including a number of treatment components and subcomponents. When thinking of CI therapy, rehabilitation researchers and ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW This review describes our current understanding of the changes in brain function and structure that occur in response to an intensive form of motor rehabilitation, constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT), that has been shown to be efficacious in promoting motor function of the paretic upper limb of stroke patients. RECENT FINDINGS Studies using transcranial magnetic stimu...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of constraint-induced movement therapy in adult stroke patients and to examine the impact of time since stroke and various treatment modalities. DATA SOURCES PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane and PEDro trial registers were searched for clinical trials published before November 2012. STUDY SELECTION Randomized or quasi-randomized controlled trials of constraint-induce...

Ethnographic data were collected at two rehabilitation facilities conducting ongoing research to evaluate functional and neurological outcomes of constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT). Our findings indicate that several patterns of behavior occur during participant/therapist interaction in therapy sessions: coaching, cheerleading, reminding, changing, and contemplating. These interaction p...

BACKGROUND In stroke patients, upper limb paresis affects many activities of daily life. Reducing disability is therefore a major aim of rehabilitation programmes for hemiparetic patients. Constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) is a current approach to stroke rehabilitation that implies the forced use and the massed practice of the affected arm by restraining the unaffected arm. OBJECTIVE...

BACKGROUND Limited data are available about the effectiveness of early rehabilitation after stroke. OBJECTIVE This is the 1st randomized controlled trial of constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) in subacute stroke to investigate neurophysiologic mechanisms and long-term outcome. METHODS Within 2 weeks after stroke, 23 patients with upper extremity (UE) weakness were randomized to 2 wee...