Recent studies show that limb apraxia is a quite frequent, yet often underdiagnosed, higher motor impairment following stroke. Because it adversely affects every-day life and personal independence, successful rehabilitation of apraxia is essential for personal well-being. Nevertheless, evidence of long-term efficacy of training schemes and generalization to untrained actions is still scarce. One possible reason for the tendency of this neurological disorder to persist may be a deficit in planning, conceptualisation and storage of complex motor acts.

This pilot study aims at investigating explicit motor learning in apractic stroke patients. In particular, we addressed the ability of apractic patients to learn and to retain new explicit sequential finger movements across 10 training sessions over a 3-week interval.

Nine stroke patients with ideomotor apraxia in its chronic stage participated in a multi-session training regimen and were included in data analyses. Patients performed an explicit finger sequence learning task (MSLT – motor sequence learning task), which is a well-established paradigm to investigate motor learning and memory processes.

Patients improved task performance in terms of speed and accuracy across sessions. Specifically, they showed a noticeable reduction in the mean time needed to perform a correct sequence and the number of erroneous sequences. We found also a trend for improved performance at the Goldenberg apraxia test protocol: “imitation of meaningless hand and finger gestures” relative to when assessed before the MSLT training.

Patients with ideomotor apraxia demonstrated the ability to acquire and maintain a novel sequence of movements; and, this training was associated with hints towards improvement of apraxia symptoms.

最近的研究表明，肢体失用症是中风后一种非常常见但经常未被诊断出的较高的运动障碍。由于它对日常生活和个人独立性产生不利影响，因此失用症的成功康复对个人福祉至关重要。然而，训练计划的长期有效性和对未经训练的行为的概括的证据仍然很少。这种神经系统疾病持续存在的一个可能原因可能是在复杂运动行为的规划、概念化和存储方面存在缺陷。

这项初步研究旨在调查实习卒中患者的外显运动学习。特别是，我们解决了实习患者在 3 周的时间间隔内在 10 次训练课程中学习和保留新的明确连续手指运动的能力。

9 名患有慢性期意念运动性失用症的中风患者参加了多阶段训练方案，并被纳入数据分析。患者执行明确的手指序列学习任务（MSLT - 运动序列学习任务），这是研究运动学习和记忆过程的完善范例。

患者在跨会话的速度和准确性方面提高了任务表现。具体来说，他们显示执行正确序列所需的平均时间和错误序列的数量显着减少。我们还发现了 Goldenberg 失用症测试方案的性能提高趋势：“模仿无意义的手和手指手势”相对于在 MSLT 训练之前进行评估。

意念运动性失用症患者表现出获得和维持新动作序列的能力；并且，这种训练与改善失用症状的暗示有关。