The research unit of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) Caps in Dijon is interested in the movement.
Whether in an elderly subject - a patient after a stroke, a Parkinson's patient - or a great athlete.
The objective: to understand the mechanisms that govern our movements and to offer drug-free rehabilitation adapted to each person.
In this laboratory, a sports performance support center supports top-level athletes, some of whom are training for the Olympic Games.
Thanks to sophisticated technologies, researchers and coaches refine training.
“I started the time machine without any treatment,” enthuses Dany Mariotte, 71.
She's not in the
DeLorean
from "Doc" in
Back to the Future
,
but on a rowing machine.
A very special bodybuilding device that allows him to be helped by electrostimulation, electrical impulses sent to his legs, via electrodes.
Dany suffers from a neurodegenerative pathology which atrophies her right leg without the caregivers having found a cause or a solution.
For the past three years, she has come every week to do 38 minutes of rowing.
And she gained 50% muscle mass, her autonomy and joie de vivre.
“From the 5th session, I was able to go down my stairs alone again.
Every year, I'm more comfortable, I have more strength in my legs, more balance.
Today I am going to pick mushrooms in the forest without a stick.
»
A multidisciplinary laboratory that studies motor skills
If Dany agrees to drive 1h30 with her husband each week, and hopes that others will benefit from this innovation, it is because the sports center she goes to in Dijon is quite exceptional.
It is part of the fundamental research laboratory of Inserm, called Cognition, Action and Sensomotor Plasticity (Caps).
A unique unit in Europe in more ways than one.
First by its multidisciplinary approach.
About sixty teacher-researchers and engineers work on motor skills, hand in hand with physical trainers and caregivers from six departments of the Dijon University Hospital, in order to better understand the dialogue between brain and muscle to move.
Second specificity: the researchers are supported by advanced technologies: robots, motion capture, lasers... "We are trying to understand the mechanism of motor skills in people with a pathology and in athletes", summarizes Charalambos Papaxanthis, director of Caps unit.
Very different populations, but with a similar functioning.
Individualize rehabilitation
Behind the calculations, the 3D images and the complex hypotheses, this fundamental research reveals concrete applications in many fields.
Thus, electrostimulation could help patients in intensive care, therefore unconscious, to keep muscle.
This research on movement “could also be used to better diagnose, explains Jérémie Gaveau, teacher-researcher.
These very fine measurements make it possible, for example, to predict cases of Alzheimer's or autism, sometimes better than clinical standards.
One can imagine that these measures will be included in the future in the battery of tests carried out by clinicians.
»
“Our objective is to find non-drug solutions for rehabilitation,” continues the director of the unit.
Medicine has come a long way in diagnosis, but treatment is a bit like the Middle Ages!
»
Studying the effect of aging on movement
But the experiments are not only interested in pathology.
This is why in a large room, this Tuesday morning, sixteen cameras surround Claudette, 87 years old.
She does not suffer from any disease and agrees with a smile to these tests to help understand the effects of aging on movement control.
“Often, when we talk about motor skills, we are interested in Parkinson's disease, raises France Mourey, physiotherapist and researcher.
But in our demographic configuration, it is interesting to see people over 80 in normal aging.
To improve prevention.
Today, we do not know why people fall and what to do.
»
3D images of Claudette raising her arm could help, in the long term, to know what movements are essential to stay healthy.
And in the event of a fall, to avoid relapses and the loss of autonomy that goes with it.
“We want to improve rehabilitation in the hospital, but also at home,” insists Charalambos Papaxanthis.
So that once the hospitalization and the sessions at the physiotherapist are over, the French can continue to make the appropriate movements at home.
How to use technology intelligently?
By collecting as much data as possible, these researchers hope to understand how the brain and muscles react in normal times, after an accident, with a pathology… “The future is to intelligently bring technology into rehabilitation, he insists.
Connect patients, collect data, analyze them to offer individualized and specific rehabilitation.
We can therefore imagine that one day, we will be able to tell an 83-year-old patient suffering from a stroke that she must do such and such an exercise to avoid such and such a symptom.
"It is not enough to have good software or a robot for each person, technology, you have to know how to use it", warns the director of the unit.
The proof: some hospitals or nursing homes have relied on humanoid robots to relieve healthcare teams.
Then stored in a cupboard these gadgets become useless.
The research team is therefore working on the interaction between robots and humans and their acceptability.
So that in the future, these machines support therapists, especially in nursing homes.
A robot, set up by a physiotherapist, could then encourage a resident to make certain movements, film and record his gestures, then analyze his progress, then transmitted to caregivers.
"The goal is not to replace the caregiver, but to supplement it", insists Peter Dominey, researcher at the Caps unit.
And to reassure: the first returns reveal that elderly people quickly adopt these small robots... like small animals.
“We tell them that they are the ones who have to teach the robots to make the movements, that highlights them”, resumes Peter Dominey.
Ehpads in the region will also “adopt” them next September.
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