Researchers from Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, conducted a randomized, controlled trial to evaluate the therapeutic benefit of mental practice with motor imagery in stroke patients with persistent upper limb motor weakness.
 
Recent studies have suggested that mental rehearsal of movement can produce effects normally attributed to practicing the actual movements. Imagining hand movements could stimulate restitution and redistribution of brain activity, which accompanies recovery of hand function, thus resulting in a reduced motor deficit. Current efficacy evidence for mental practice with motor imagery in stroke is insufficient due to methodological limitations.

Hello,

I am an occupational therapist working with elders who have suffered a stroke. I am interested in incorporating your stroke CD in my treatment. While I have used your guided imagery CDs myself and found them very helpful, I'm wondering whether there are any precautions I should be aware of prior to using them with my patients.

Thanks for your response, and for your important work!

Warmly,
Daria

Dear Daria,

There are no special counter-indications for stroke patients that I’m aware of or that have ever been reported to me.  One consideration, however, is that some of your elderly patients may suffer from hearing loss - especially in the lower registers – and this could mean they have trouble hearing my voice over the music. It’s something to be alert for.

The usual orientation should be fine: reminding people to sit comfortably, relax to it, to not try too hard or think too hard about it, but rather just let the images soak in, in an easy, open, receptive way.  Over time, they will take hold below the thinking brain, deep in the body.

Hello,

I am an occupational therapist working with elders who have suffered a stroke. I am interested in incorporating your stroke CD in my treatment. While I have used your guided imagery CDs myself and found them very helpful, I'm wondering whether there are any precautions I should be aware of prior to using them with my patients.

Thanks for your response, and for your important work!

Warmly,
Don

Researchers from McGill University in Montreal analyzed research data on the effectiveness of Virtual Reality for retraining motor function of the upper limbs in stroke patients. They posed two questions to examine:  (1) Is the use of immersive VR more effective than conventional therapy or no therapy in the rehabilitation of the UL in patients with hemiplegia? and (2) Is the use of nonimmersive VR more effective than conventional therapy or no therapy in the rehabilitation of the UL in patients with hemiplegia?

Researchers from the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the University of Cincinnati’s Academic Medical Center looked at the impact of “mental practice” (the imaginal rehearsal of physical movements) on affected arm movements in stroke patients, as well as changes in cortical mapping in the brain.

Mental practice (MP) is a noninvasive, inexpensive method of enabling repetitive, task-specific practice (RTP) which has been shown in past studies to increase affected arm use and function significantly more than just RTP alone. 

As a next step, this 10-subject case series examined the possibility that cortical plasticity is a mechanism underlying the positive treatment effect from mental practice (MP) when combined with RTP (repetitive task-specific practice). Ten chronic stroke patients (mean = 36.7 months) exhibiting stable, moderate motor deficits, received 30-minute therapy sessions for their affected arms 3 days/week for 10 weeks, emphasizing valued activities of daily living (ADLs).

Interested in building upon recent studies showing that imagery helps post-stroke patients relearn daily tasks, researchers from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Kowloon, Hong Kong, China investigated whether imagery could also help with generalizing skills on trained and untrained tasks in new environments in a small, randomized, controlled clinical trial. 

Thirty-five acute post-stroke patients were randomly assigned to an imagery training group (n=18) or conventional functional rehabilitation (n=17) group. The imagery intervention was 3-weeks of standardized practices and daily tasks using chunking-regulation-rehearsal strategies.

Outcome measurements were the performances on trained and untrained tasks in the training and novel environments.

Researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi examined the short-term impact of a brief yoga intervention on some of the biochemical risk indicators for cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus.

Ninety-eight subjects (67 male, 31 female), ages 20-74, with hypertension, coronary artery disease, diabetes mellitus, and a variety of other illnesses, participated in a lifestyle training program that consisted of yoga asanas (postures), pranayama (breathing exercises), relaxation techniques, group support, individualized advice, lectures and films on the philosophy of yoga and the place of yoga in daily life, meditation, stress management, nutrition, and knowledge about their disease.

Imagery Rehearsal Found Critical in Motor Rehab for Stroke, Better than Physical Practice Alone

Researchers from the University of Lyon in Bron Cedex, France tested whether "mental rehearsal" (motor imagery) is equivalent to physical learning in restoring motor function in hemiplegic patients (paralyzed on one side), and examined what would be optimal proportions of real execution vs. rehearsal.

Subjects were asked to grasp an object and insert it into an adapted slot. One group (G0) practiced the task only by physical execution (240 trials); three groups imagined performing the task in different rates of trials (25%, G25; 50%, G50; 75%, G75), and physically executed movements for the remaining trials; a fourth, control group imagined a visual rotation task in 75% of the trials and then performed the same motor task as the other groups.