Tongue-Trackpad: Tongue Rehabilitation Through Quantitative Personalized Visual-Feedback Intervention

Effective rehabilitation of tongue movement relies on delivering personalized interventions and quantitatively assessing the intervention's impact. Current approaches primarily focus on enhancing tongue movement control and strength through oromotor exercises and audio feedback. Here, we introduce the Tongue- Trackpad a novel solution for tongue movement rehabilitation and progress tracking. The Tongue- Trackpad is a wireless intra-oral device that provides real-time visual feedback of tongue movement while quantifying the movement, thus enabling personalized interventions. In this preliminary feasibility study, a stroke survivor diag-nosed with dysarthria participated in eighteen sessions of per-sonalized visual-feedback pursuit intervention using the Tongue-Trackpad. The intervention was customized to the participant's tongue movement deficit areas identified during the initial evaluation. Despite the participant's severe speech disorder, characterized by a Diadochokinetic rate of zero, the results indicated a modest positive change in tongue movement both within a single session and over the intervention period. The results showed an average increase of 3.5 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\pm 4.7{\%}$</tex> in coverage area, a reduction of 1.5 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\pm 1.9{\%}$</tex> in the deficit area, and a 1.7 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\pm$</tex> 3.1 % reduction in the excess area within a single session. Similar modest trends were observed throughout the entire intervention period. Although further studies with more participants are needed for robust conclusions, this preliminary feasibility study suggests provided preliminary that providing personalized visual-feedback intervention using the Tongue- Trackpad holds promise for tongue movement rehabilitation.