Ressources.ircam

The sonification of human movement is a growing research topic, with early results showing promise in a wide range of applications, such as performing arts, rehabilitation and sports training. Our long-term goal is to investigate the particular case of sonification of arm movements for the rehabilitation of stroke patients. This involves providing patients with auditory feedback relative to the coordination between shoulder and elbow motion, and relative to movement smoothness. For this purpose, we are exploring different types of sonification and musical metaphors, and various sound synthesis techniques. This includes very simple methods such as filtering noise as well as more complex methods such physical modelling sound synthesis and concatenative and granular sound synthesis. In order to evaluate first these different techniques on normal patients, we developed a methodology using a motorized splint, which allows us to alter the arm coordination. We report here our
experimental methods and preliminary results.