Does sensorimotor upper limb therapy post stroke alter behavior and brain connectivity differently compared to motor therapy? Protocol of a phase II randomized controlled trial

Table 1 Outcome measures

Primary	ARAT	Action Research Arm Test [32]: grasp, grip, pinch, and gross movement of the affected upper limb
Secondary	FMA-UE	Fugl-Meyer Motor Assessment - Upper Extremity [34]: overall motor impairment of the affected upper limb: shoulder, arm, wrist, hand, and fingers
	9HPT	Nine-Hole Peg Test [36]: manual dexterity
	SULCS	Stroke Upper Limb Capacity Scale [37]: upper limb capacity
	ABIL	Abilhand questionnaire [38]: perceived hand function
	Em-NSA	Erasmus modified Nottingham Sensory Assessment [39]: light touch, pressure, sharp, sharp-dull discrimination, position sense of the upper limb
	PTT	Perceptual threshold of touch [31]: light touch
	SSD	Composite standardized somatosensory deficit index [7]:
	TDT	Texture discrimination test [41]: texture discrimination
	WPST	Wrist position sense test [42]: position sense
	fTORT	Functional Tactile Object Recognition Test [43]: recognition of object by touch
	MoCa	Montreal Cognitive Assessment [30]: cognitive function
Brain imaging protocol
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs fMRI)
	Anatomical MRI scan Resting state fMRI scan
		Standardized 3 Tesla MRI scanner, including standard head coil 30 parallel transverse orientated slices (thickness 4 mm, no interslice gap) Parameter settings: TE = 33 ms, flip angle = 90°, TR = 1700 ms, FOV = 230 mm, matrix = 64 × 64 Duration: 7 min

ISSN: 1745-6215