Upper Limb Kinematics of Adults with Cerebral Palsy on Bilateral Functional Tasks

Adults with cerebral palsy (CP) often show upper limb impairments which impact their ability to execute activities of daily living (ADLs). Three adults with CP and five healthy adults performed three types of bilateral and unilateral ADLs: drink, pour, and pick and place tasks. An affordable bilateral assessment system (BiAS) was used to measure wrist kinematic trajectories. Four metrics, total completion time, maximum velocity, smoothness, and phase difference, were used to evaluate each functional task. Overall, adults with CP took a longer time than the healthy subjects to complete all unilateral functional tasks with their non-dominant hand. Moreover, while the healthy controls had similar mean velocities in the dominant and non-dominant hands during the bilateral tasks, adults with CP typically exhibited slower mean velocities in the dominant hand during the bilateral tasks than during the unilateral dominant tasks. Similar to existing literature, we found that adults with CP compensated by slowing the dominant arm to match the non-dominant arm in order to complete the tasks, showing the importance of utilizing bilateral training in upper limb rehabilitation treatments.