30-Second Takeaway
- Robot-assisted upper-limb therapy after stroke improves motor function but not activities of daily living versus conventional therapy.
- Balance-focused physiotherapy yields moderate, consistent balance gains in Parkinson’s disease, without a clear dose–response threshold.
- Hypnotic cognitive therapy modestly reduces chronic pain and depression after spinal cord injury, via brief, remote sessions.
- Noninvasive brain stimulation improves unilateral spatial neglect after stroke, with rTMS/TBS and acute-phase treatment showing larger effects.
- Continuous sit-to-stand power and gait speed outperform categorical cutoffs for fall-risk prediction in older adults.
Week ending March 28, 2026
Targeted neurorehabilitation, exercise dosing, and emerging interventions across stroke, Parkinson’s disease, chronic pain, fatigue syndromes, and medically complex populations
Robot-assisted upper-limb therapy after stroke improves motor function, not ADLs
Across 21 meta-analyses including 535 RCTs and 27,598 stroke survivors, robot-assisted therapy (RAT) improved upper-limb motor function versus conventional therapy. RAT did not show statistically significant advantages for activities of daily living, despite clear motor gains. Treatment effects varied by stroke stage, baseline motor impairment, and robot type, suggesting the need for careful patient–technology matching. Benefits were mainly at the body-function level, with limited evidence for long-term maintenance and substantial outcome heterogeneity.
Balance-specific physiotherapy yields moderate balance gains in Parkinson’s disease
This systematic review and dose–response meta-analysis pooled 30 studies with 2,932 people with Parkinson’s disease receiving exercise targeting balance. Physiotherapy produced moderate balance improvements overall (SMD 0.56), with balance-specific training showing the largest effects (SMD 0.64). Benefits were consistent across Mini-BESTest, Berg Balance Scale, and Timed Up and Go outcomes. No clear linear dose–response relationship emerged between training volume and effect size, highlighting uncertainty about optimal dosage.
Remote hypnotic cognitive therapy modestly reduces chronic SCI pain
In 127 adults with chronic spinal cord injury pain, six weekly sessions of hypnotic cognitive therapy (HYP-CT) reduced average pain more than usual care. Pain intensity decreased by about half a point at 6 weeks and nearly 0.8 points at 12 weeks on a 0–10 scale. HYP-CT also produced greater reductions in depression scores than usual care at both time points. Telephone and Zoom delivery had similar analgesic effects, and patients with purely neuropathic pain may derive greater benefit.
rTMS and TBS outperform tDCS/tACS for post-stroke unilateral neglect
This meta-analysis of 17 RCTs (425 patients) found noninvasive brain stimulation improves unilateral spatial neglect after stroke. Repetitive TMS significantly improved line bisection, star cancellation, and Catherine Bergego Scale scores versus control. Theta-burst stimulation also improved star cancellation and Catherine Bergego Scale scores, whereas tDCS had smaller effects and tACS was ineffective. Acute-phase treatment and excitatory protocols over ipsilesional posterior parietal cortex yielded larger benefits than chronic-phase or inhibitory contralesional approaches.
References
Numbered in order of appearance. Click any reference to view details.
Additional Reads
Optional additional studies from this edition.