400 Section - MI-BCI Active Rehabilitation System Based on Synchronized ta-VNS Feedback: Enhancing Functional Recovery in Stroke Patients through a Closed-Loop Rehabilitation Mechanism

Motor Imagery Brain-Computer Interface (MI-BCI) is a pivotal tool for boosting neural plasticity and facilitating functional recovery in stroke patients (Xiao et al, 2024), yet current applications predominantly rely on external devices to drive limb movement (Lin et al, 2024), offering only passive sensory feedback that restricts active neural regulatory feedback and the reshaping of central functions—prompting the integration of Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation (taVNS), which delivers sustained bottom-up corticoregulatory effects, with MI-BCI robotic hand passive feedback to form a synchronized taVNS feedback intervention method (Hasan et al, 2023).

Design:

A total of 60 stroke patients were randomly assigned to three groups: the synchronized taVNS feedback group, the non-synchronized taVNS stimulation group, and the sham taVNS stimulation group, followed by comparative analysis of key sensory-motor brain region activation and the reshaping of brain functional connectivity across the three groups.

Results:

The synchronized taVNS feedback group exhibited significantly higher activation of sensory-motor brain regions and more effective reshaping of brain functional connectivity compared to the non-synchronized taVNS stimulation group, while the non-synchronized taVNS stimulation group demonstrated superior outcomes over the sham taVNS stimulation group.

Conclusion:

Synchronizing taVNS with external device-driven limb movement enhances the therapeutic efficacy of MI-BCI by providing active feedback regulation in the closed-loop pathway, which more effectively induces neural reshaping in sensory-motor brain regions and promotes functional recovery in stroke patients.