Functional electrical stimulation (fes) of ankle muscles moves patients towards the decoupling of lower-limb muscle modules for individuals with post-stroke gait

We used Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) to discover muscle modules (groups of co-activated muscles) of patients with post-stroke hemiparetic gait before and after gait retraining. Patients who have suffered a stroke often have an impaired gait due to the merging of these modules, which are distinct in healthy gait cycles. We found that functional electrical stimulation (FES) gait treatment helped to initiate the decoupling of these merged modules in some patients. The patients that displayed evidence of early modular decoupling responded to treatment and increased their Trailing Limb Angle (TLA).