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Cybernic treatment involves the generation of an interactive bio-feedback loop between an individual's nervous system and the worn cyborg Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL); this treatment has been applied for several intractable neuromuscular disorders. Thus, it is of interest to determine its potential for parkinsonian patients. This study confirmed the feasibility of using a HAL trunk unit to improve parkinsonian gait disturbance. HAL establishes functional and physical synchronization with the wearer by providing lateral cyclic forces to the chest in the form of somatosensory and motor cues. To confirm the feasibility of its use for improving parkinsonian gait disturbances, we conducted experiments with three Parkinson's disease patients and two patients with progressive supranuclear palsy. During the experiments, the immediate effect of the intervention was assessed; all participants exhibited improvements in gait disturbance while wearing the HAL unit, and this improvement effect persisted without the HAL unit in two participants. Afterward, based on the assessment, we conducted a continuous intervention for one participant. In this intervention, the number of steps in the final experiment was significantly decreased compared with the initial state. These findings suggest that the proposed method is an option for treating parkinsonian patients to generate somatosensory and motor cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correction to: I Scientific Reports i https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-33847-z, published online 28 April 2023 The original version of this Article contained an error in the Introduction, where reference 14 was cited incorrectly. "Previous studies of HAL have shown that cybernic treatments based on iBF effectively improve the gait function of patients with several intractable neurological and neuromuscular disorders SP 14,21,22,23 sp ." now reads: "Previous studies of HAL have shown that cybernic treatments based on iBF effectively improve the gait function of patients with several intractable neurological and neuromuscular disorders SP 21,22,23 sp .". [Extracted from the article]