The researchers tested the glove with people who had spinal cord injuries sustained more than a year prior to the study. The results revealed the wireless glove brought renewed mobility and sensation, improvements that are not generally seen more than a year after the injury.
The musical glove is linked to both a computer and a piano/keyboard. The computer plays a song and the glove sends vibrations to the user's fingers, stimulating the appropriate fingers. Simultaneously the keyboard lights up with the right keys.
Researchers also discovered that people didn't have to play the piano in order to learn songs and see improvement.
In the future, researchers want to confirm what they think is true; increased motor abilities could be caused by renewed brain activity that sometimes becomes dormant in people with spinal cord injuries. They also plan to study MRIs to see if stimulating the fingers could trigger activity in the hand's sensory cortex, which leads to firing in the brain's motor cortex.
