Researchers at the University of East Anglia are launching a new study to see how sleep can help recover from stroke.
They will investigate whether people’s sleep patterns influence the recovery of neuromuscular function: the ability to use weak muscles in the right order and at the right time during movement.
The team is looking for people who have suffered a stroke to participate and are waiting for their findings to reveal how the brain recovers after a stroke.
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to a part of the brain is cut off, killing brain cells. Damage to the brain can affect the functioning of the body, and weakness on one side of the body is the most common and well-known effect of stroke. If your muscles are weak, you may have difficulty moving your limbs and moving in general. We want to better understand how the brain recovers after a stroke, so we’ll investigate how stroke survivors regain movement and how sleep and time influence. We look forward to hearing more about sleep patterns, which are good for recovering from stroke. “
Principal Investigator Prof. Valerie Pomeroy, UEA School of Health Sciences.
The team is looking for people in the region who have suffered a stroke to participate in the study. Participants will take measures of daily activity, sleep and movement.
The project will consist of measuring the movement of people using small sensors placed on the surface of the skin that record natural muscle activity while performing a daily task: picking up a phone.
Participants will be asked to attend two visits to the UEA. These visits usually take an hour and a half to two hours each. During the visits, participants will perform movement measurements and complete questionnaires about how they sleep.
Between visits, participants will wear a movement clock on each wrist for seven days to measure their daily activity at home.
Professor Pomeroy said: “There is strong evidence that physical therapy improves people’s ability to move and be independent after a stroke. But six months after the stroke, many people are still unable to move. in daily activities, such as answering a phone call.
“We are conducting this study to understand more about whether this situation could be improved by using interventions to change a patient’s sleep pattern and thus improve the recovery of movement ability.”
Source:
University of East Anglia