Single-Trial Detection of the Event-Related Desynchronization to Locate with Temporal Precision the Onset of Voluntary Movements in Stroke Patients

Stroke patients may present motor impairments that in many cases require an intensive rehabilitation process with experts helping the patient to recover the functionality of the affected limb. A target during this rehabilitation process is to induce neural plasticity in brain regions associated with the motor control of the affected limb. Electrical stimulation tightly synchronized with the intention to perform a movement has proven to be an effectiveway of enhancing cortical excitability in healthy subjects. The electroencephalogram can help to detect voluntary movements online.We propose here an Electroencephalographybased system aimed to detect the instants atwhich stroke patients attempt to start voluntary movements with the affected upperlimb. To accomplish this, the analysis of the cortical rhythms and their variations are used. In the preliminary results obtained with 3 chronic stroke patients, 63±14% of the movements were detected with a temporal precision in the detections of the onsets of the movements of -126±313 ms.