Bruce H. Dobkin – författare

This monograph translates neuroscientific research to illuminate ongoing and future practices for the rehabilitation of patients with neurologic diseases. The author dissects fundamental concepts, current practices, and clinical trials to define what clinicians and researchers need to consider as they pursue best practices and areas ripe for exploration. Remarkable studies from functional anatomy, neural repair, physiologic imaging of the brain, and brain-machine interfaces reveal how the structure and function of the nervous system may respond to therapeutic manipulations for walking, grasping, and cognition. These concepts are brought forward into treating the medical complications and the impairments and disabilities of patients across neurologic diseases.

The Second Edition of this single-authored volume integrates multiple disciplines of basic and clinical research to help clinicians further develop the best possible care for the rehabilitation of patients with neurologic diseases. From the readable descriptions of the structures and functions of pathways for movement and cognition, the reader comes to understand the potential for training induced, pharmacologic, and near-future biologic interventions to enhance recovery. Dr. Dobkin shows how functional neuroimaging serves as a marker for whether physical, cognitive, and neuromodulating therapies work and how they sculpt the plasticity of the brain. Themes, such as how the manipulation of sensory experience can serve as a formidable tool for rehabilitation, run throughout the text, built from the level of the synapse to behaviors such as grasping, walking, and thinking. From illustrating how we may one day repair the brain and spinal cord to how to retrain spared and new pathways, Dr. Dobkin draws insights from a broad swath of fundamental research to give clinicians tools they can translate into bedside practices.The book treats the medical complications and therapeutic approaches to neurologic diseases as an interconnected matrix. The management of common medical issues, impairments, and disabilities are described across diseases. Special problems posed by patients with stroke, myelopathies, brain injury, multiple sclerosis, degenerative diseases, and motor unit disorders receive individual comment. Short-term and delayed pulse interventions for patients, along with clinical trials, are dissected and put into perspective.The First Edition of this book was titled Neurologic Rehabilitation. The title has been changed to reflect Dr. Dobkin''s sense that fundamental research now drives the field of neurologic rehabilitation even more than it could in 1996 when the First Edition was published. The Second Edition features entirely new chapters on functional neuroimaging of recovery; neurostimulators and neuroprosteses; integration into the book of many new clinical and neuroscientific observations relevant to the clinician; and extensive updating and expansion of all chapters.Readers, whether clinicians serving the rehabilitation team, or students or researchers in neuroscience, neurology, physical medicine, allied health, or bioengineering, will acquire new insights and tools for creative pursuits that aim to lessen the disabilities of patients.

One third of people after stroke, having survived the first few weeks, return home with significant residual disability, and can therefore benefit from an active, multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme. This is a comprehensive guide to rehabilitation after stroke, in which leading international authorities set out the basic neuroscientific principles that underlie brain recovery, including chapters on neural plasticity and neural imaging, and describe appropriate rehabilitation strategies for the many different functional problems that can arise after stroke. These include movement disorders, sensory loss, dysphagia and dysarthria, problems with continence and secual difficulties, and cognitive disorders. Also covered are measurement of disability and quality of life, assistive technology and vocational rehabilitation. It is therefore an essential handbook and reference for all members of the multidisciplinary stroke rehabilitation team, including medical personnel, therapists, clinical neuropsychologists and rehabilitation nurses.