JNER at 15 years: analysis of the state of neuroengineering and rehabilitation

Abstract

On JNER's 15th anniversary, this editorial analyzes the state of the field of neuroengineering and rehabilitation. I first discuss some ways that the nature of neurorehabilitation research has evolved in the past 15 years based on my perspective as editor-in-chief of JNER and a researcher in the field. I highlight increasing reliance on advanced technologies, improved rigor and openness of research, and three, related, new paradigms - wearable devices, the Cybathlon competition, and human augmentation studies - indicators that neurorehabilitation is squarely in the age of wearability. Then, I briefly speculate on how the field might make progress going forward, highlighting the need for new models of training and learning driven by big data, better personalization and targeting, and an increase in the quantity and quality of usability and uptake studies to improve translation.

Keywords: Movement; Neuroengineering; Neuroscience; Rehabilitation; Robotics; Wearable.

Fig. 1

Word cloud generated from the titles of 1231 papers published in JNER over the past 15 years. One sees the integration of clinical and technological terminology. Generated at https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/

Fig. 2

Representative figures from the most accessed papers of JNER [3, 4]. The virtual reality figure is from [5]. These highly accessed papers highlight the strong public interest in the blending of technology with rehabilitation

Fig. 3

Evidence of the increasing role of technology in rehabilitation science. Shown are the frequency of specialties listed by principal investigators in rehabilitation grant application bisosketches. Percentages were calculated from 1178 applications (first submissions and first re-submissions) between 2007 and 2018. Data were shown at the December 3, 2018 National Advisory Board for Medical Rehabilitation Research meeting and were produced by NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis

Fig. 4

Conceptual timeline of the integration of various technologies in movement rehabilitation research and practice. The current state of the field is characterized by increased use of artificial intelligence, generation of big data, and experimentation with adjuvant therapies. We are squarely in the age of wearability, and wearable devices for rehabilitation are spinning out to applications in human augmentation

Fig. 5

Analysis of the title, abstracts, and key words of the 1231 papers published in JNER over the past 15 years for the number (top) and percent (bottom) of papers that use the words robot*, exo*, wear*, virtual, sensor, brain-computer, and model. The fastest growing terms over the past 5 years are “exo*”, “wear*” and “robot*”