earticle

영어

Stroke leads to functional impairments related to proprioception deficits, which produce compensatory pattern to assure an independence in daily activities. Proprioception is one of essential elements to provide feedback and feedforward control, achieving appropriate motor control and learning. It’s fundamental for functional recovery after stroke. Proprioception is defined as a sense of position, motion, or force. It arises from sensory receptors (mechanoreceptors of muscle and joint) which locate in deep region of the body, or sensory receptors which locate in superficial region of the body. However, proprioception and tactile sense must be recognized to be different each other. Proprioceptors detect the change of proprioceptive information during posture and movement. Afferent information from proprioceptors plays an important role to build optimal motor control strategy for various activities in daily life, which needs integrative control in higher centers. This is completed by an integral mechanism interacting with a variety of environmental factors. Therefore, proprioception deficits after stroke result in serious functional problems. Although proprioceptive function has been essentially considered for functional recovery in clinical setting, there are many conflicts in evaluating the extent of its impairment. To test precisely proprioceptive function, it’s so important to understand that it requires working memory and interhemispheric connection to optimize proprioceptive integration in peripheral and central systems. Unfortunately, in stroke, neural control and its process frequently is difficult to be harmonized to achieve proper goal in motor control. In fact, such problems also contribute to the lack of beneficial treatment protocol in clinical setting. Therefore, clinicians should make an effort to develop objective, accurate, and reliable tools to measure proprioceptive function of patients with stroke. In addition, it needs to establish optimal treatment methods based on evaluation results. Accordingly, this study aimed to provide valuable information about peripheral and central mechanisms of proprioception, influences of proprioception deficits in stroke, and theeir evaluation and treatment using literature review.