Consciousness as the emergent property of the interaction between brain, body, and environment: Implications for robot-enhanced neuromotor rehabilitation

Neuromotor rehabilitation, typically seen with stroke patients, is usually mistakenly focused on the recovery of movements while disregarding the insufficient or missing awareness of the affected part of the body. Thus, the functional recovery of sensorimotor abilities is fundamentally a problem of consciousness. The paper addresses the implications of this concept in the design of optimal robot-assistance in the training of patients, according to the assumption that consciousness is the emergent property of the interaction between brain, body, and environment. Optimal assistance is formulated as a process that follows three basic guidelines: (1) limitation of the assistance level to the minimum value capable of allowing patients to initiate the movements; (2) trial-to-trial reduction of assistance in order to promote the emergence of voluntary control; (3) nonmonotonic modulation from session to session in order to promote memory consolidation.