EMG-Based Biofeedback to Improve Motor Control in Children with Dystonia

EMG-Based Biofeedback to Improve Motor Control in Children with Dystonia

The scarcity of effective treatment options for children with dystonia represents an important clinical challenge. In this framework, biofeedback training is a promising non-invasive treatment candidate. Indeed, rehabilitation tools able to provide augmented sensory information may be used by children to better calibrate and modulate muscle activations to attain improved motor control. Recently, biofeedback paradigms based on surface electromyographic activity of task-related muscles have been developed and tested. These studies, by leveraging different sensory channels, such as visual and haptic modalities, showed that children with dystonia have the ability to gain partial control over muscle activations, resulting in clinical improvements. Future studies should adopt more sensitive and accurate outcome measures with the ability of capturing small motor changes, in order to quantitatively and reliably assess the benefits of biofeedback training in children with dystonia.