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Biotech Software

Software to Assist in Recovering from a Stroke? 64

Posted by Cliff from the massaging-the-mind dept.
jshaw001 asks: "My mother recently suffered a stroke. She is not that old, only 55, and she is out of the hospital now but still has a long road to recovery. The doctors said she should be able to recover, but it's up to how hard she works at it. She is an accountant, so numbers and being able to memorize lots of stuff is very important. In short, her memory is very important. I'm in college right now, and my father has to work all day so we can't be there to help her out with her memory exercises all the time. I was wondering if anyone knows of good software I can get for her to help her with her memory, reasoning, and typing. Free software, shareware, commercial code -- cost is not a factor. Games are also a plus. Please note that we are limited to Windows software. Any other advice on things I can use to help her, or your experiences, are welcomed. Thank you."
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Software to Assist in Recovering from a Stroke? More

Software to Assist in Recovering from a Stroke?

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  • This news story on Drudge might be a little bit related or of interest, depending on her abilities:

    Paralysed people can now control artificial limbs by thought alone. Ian Sample reports" [guardian.co.uk]. It won't meet your immediate needs, but there might be something of interest in it.

  • Mensa Puzzle Book. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Get one of those puzzle books put out by Mensa.

    That'll work your brain.

  • Games (Score:4, Informative)

    by wed128 ( 722152 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:36AM (#12100107)
    Hmmm...Any kind of FPS is good for coordination and reaction time, Enemy Territory is a good free one. also, some typing tutor or whatever might help. As far as reasoning goes...maybe she should read a book or something?

  • slightly off topic but helpful stroke information. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i know this isnt related to memory, but since reovering from a stroke has other complications i figured i would post this... its software that helps stroke victims regain vision loss after a stroke..

    http://www.novavisiontherapy.com/english/index.asp [novavisiontherapy.com]

    personal experience with my grandmother is long term memory comes back after a short while and stays, but new short term seems to be difficult i cant wait to see what others suggest... good luck, and God bless....

  • Some Basic Info (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {nahsei}> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:38AM (#12100135) Homepage Journal
    Damage from a stroke is due to a lack of Oxygen to a particular part of the brain. Essentially, because of a lack of oxygen, those cells die, and all the connections they have made throughout your life become useless.

    Helping someone recover from a stroke depends wholly on where the damage occured. Asking your question is a bit like asking, "I hurt my body, how can I fix it?" One would want to know what kind of injury you suffered, exactly how severe it is, and what types of resulting actions you are unable to perform.

    A common side-effect / symptom of strokes is "aphasia", which is a lack of speech processing ability. It's a bit like if you went blind by injury to your brain, and not to your eyes (you could also lose speech by injury to your jaw or tongue). Other stroke defects include motor problems and other issues. Memory capacity is particularly unlikely to be affected, but it seriously depends on where the damage occured. If they think she might be able to make a full recovery, it's unlikely that she has permenant damage to any areas of her cortex involved with creating or storing new long or short-term memory.

    But seriously, I would rephrase your questions much more specifically, because a stroke is a serious problem, and cannot be addressed by simply one software tool. I would look into exactly what types of damage have occured, and what types of therapy typically work. A computer can be useful for that therapy, because it can provide lots of trials and none of the embarassment associated with poor performance on a task which might result from being "good" at a task before a stroke and having difficulty performing it after the stroke occurs.
    • Wouldn't it be more beneficial for the largest number of people if a wide variety of available software was discussed here and the types of symptoms associated with people who should use mentioned software? Sure, he could have been very specific and asked for exactly the right software. But then his mother would have her solution but someone else's wouldn't - because her symptoms are different.

      Instead of criticizing - why not list some software that you know of and what symptoms you'd expect to see in someo

      • Re:Some Basic Info (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {nahsei}> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @11:05AM (#12100477) Homepage Journal
        I wasn't criticizing. I was informing.

        There's a difference. Recovery from a stroke isn't like anything you've ever experienced in your adult life. It's not like learning a new skill, in many cases, it can be learning a skill without the placticity of a younger brain, the ability to generalize from other skills you know, or the ability to re-learn that skill at all.

        A stroke is essentially the functional equivalent of someone taking a chainsaw to your computer's internals, or writing a script that deleted random files and core functions, then repartitioned various sectors and screwed with your wiring. Suppose someone had posted a question on Slashdot saying, "My computer is broken and I'd like to purchase products to fix it?" Wouldn't the first questions be: "What's wrong, what are the symptoms, what is the prognosis?"

        I think it's far more important that he understands the quality and etiology of his mother's injury so that he can properly administer care and so that he can understand the Doctor when he gets information. Playing computer games is one thing - understanding exactly what happened will be far more beneficial in the long term.
        • Seriously get over yourself your not helping at all if you want to swing your virtual intellectual dick around some more, go ahead. It's not like I'm expecting this to solve problems just to help to supplement her therapy from the hospital. There is that better, ok now run to google so you can up with something to slap others down again.
    • He mentions memory exercises, so I'd start from there.

      There are plenty of examples of the classic memory game [google.com].
    • But seriously, I could rephrase your questions much more specifically

      Nice background info, but not very helpful. The human brain excels in pattern recognition. The type of software he's looking for is therefore software aimed at training pattern recognition. Memory games for example. Since his mother is or used to be a accountant any memory games dealing with numbers would probably be go good place to start with, since that will be a familiar domain. Start with that, then find other memory games include t

  • Difficult question... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lpangelrob2 ( 721920 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:44AM (#12100202) Journal
    First of all, prayin' she gets better.

    Second of all... this is a difficult question to answer without knowing where she is right now. Many people that have strokes do not recover -- my grandfather died of one at 69 (or thereabouts). I get the impression that when the doctor said that it depends how hard she works towards her recovery, it's not so much what she is working on, more that it is how she works on it. So this is how both electronic and non-electronic board games came to mind.

    If you're too busy with school / work to be able to do multiplayer games / activities, I have to imagine basic solitaire with cards is a good starting point. Scrabble probably falls on the far end of the spectrum. I get the impression Risk is good for recovery as well -- all these games have a different twist on the strategy required to win them. Which game really depends on where she's at right now in the eyes of your doctor and yourself.

    So long as she's trying to use her mind, and working past the initial frustration of being a stroke victim, and not sitting watching TV all day not engaging her mind... I think the road to recovery might be a bit easier.

  • Language teaching software may help... (Score:4, Informative)

    by oofoe ( 709282 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:50AM (#12100267) Journal
    I don't know if you've looked into language learning software, but there is a lot of it available for Windows and it does a lot of the flashcard type stuff. I've also found that nothing stretches my brain like trying to wrap it around another language (human or computer)...

    Bookware for various languages:

    Living Language [randomhouse.com]

    A list of the 'Teach Yourself' Books. [amazon.com]

    Tuttle Kanji Cards [barnesandnoble.com] - I have a set of these and they're very nice flashcards.

    Free-ish software for Japanese:

    Kanji Gold [web.uvic.ca]

    Tile Tag [bitboost.com] - Drill game for Japanese kana.

    Stuff to pay for:

    Multi-Lingual Books [multilingualbooks.com] - Seem to have a good selection of stuff.

    OK... So I myself am interested in Japanese... ;-) However, it does seem to exercise a lot of different portions of your brain, from the pictographic script to the weird (to me!) grammer stuff. However, you should have her pick what she's most interested in, since interest is vital to keeping with a foreign language self-study program.

    Another thing you might look at is the game of Go. It seems to be well thought of by various people who should know, and I believe it's even claimed to be effective in staving off such things as Alzheimers. However, the good players say that there's no good computer implementation, so you might have to find her a human opponent.

    American Go Association [usgo.org]

    Good luck!

    Disclaimer: I've tried some of these resources, not all. Your mileage may vary. Contents may settle during shipment.

  • Oddly enough, Gameboy classic Tetris (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:54AM (#12100323)
    My mother had a stroke and oddly enough, a classic old (1989) Gameboy with the old original Tetris helped her out quite a bit.
    I don't think the newer Gameboys would work as well since they have smaller form factor and are harder to pick up with "fumbly fingers"

    The old Gameboys also can take a fair bit of abuse like being dropped or having food dripped on them, etc.

    TDz.

  • A Linux Point and a suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HMarieY ( 316249 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @11:02AM (#12100424) Homepage
    First, as a teacher and now homeschool mom who attempted to use Linux for over a year I must say that the comment on moving to Linux was uncalled for. I loved it for its stability, but had to give it up due to the lack of quality (appealing and intuitive interface, non-crashing, easy to install, and actually educational in nature) educational games and resources. Good design is especially important when dealing with children, espcially those with special needs (read special ed students), and with adults who need occuptaional/recreational therapy. There is, or was last year, a significant lack of quality educational games that are stable

    Aside from that, there are plenty of good games out there, especially ones which are educational (which would prove especially helpful in dealing with stroke as they would help rebuild the pathways and make new ones.)

    There are many good educational sites that are free to use and that are very simple to get to, especially if you were to make her homepage a custom designed web portal with links to all the sites and activities you think she will enjoy. I did this for my kids, designing a site for each that has picture links to all their favorite web sites.

    Depending on the level and area of damage you should be able to make a portal of links that would suit her needs. If you need a jumping off point with a variety of educational sites you could look through the links on our site: http://www.shamusyoung.com/kidsportal/kidshome.htm l [shamusyoung.com]. Feel free to copy and use the source if you like. I would look through the different sites and see what is most likely to work on the areas she needs, i.e. Memory (the game), math games, logic games, etc.

    http://www.popcap.com/ [popcap.com] games, Real.com, Shockwave, and Yahoo also have some great games that help build problem solving skills, working with the logic/mathmatical part of the brain, even Tetris is good for logic developement. (if you don't mind the occasional spyware, in fact installing http://www.lavasoft.com/ [lavasoft.com] Ad-aware and an anti-virus program like http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 [grisoft.com] AVG would be wise prior to any downloads).

    If you can get a hold of the old "Doctor Brain" games they are wonderful for this type of situation as they are fun to play (even for adults) and deliberately work on different parts of the brain, i.e. File Sorting to work with memory, etc. The Incredible Machine games and Lemmings are also good for logic and problem solving developement.
    • Well there are distros targeted to educational software like Debian Jr.

      But as you say there are also lots of websites that work fine under Firefox+Flash plugin, and older games like Lemmings should run under DOS machine emulators.

      So I wouldn't say there's nothing there accessible from Linux. And certainly the flash games and emulated stuff should run as well as anywhere else.
      • This may be true. However, when dealing with someone who has recently had a stroke the chances are that things need to be kept pretty simple just as they need to be when dealing with special ed students. If both individuals caring for this woman are rather busy with work and school and are looking for a simple solution, something she can deal with without outside help, then keeping the installation as well as the actually running the game needs to be simple as well.

        In my experience, DOS simulators are no

  • Non-traditional methods (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Weed, and a lot of reading. No, I'm not kidding. Look into it.

  • Glad to see that slashdot is running tie-in articles [slashdot.org] now... : p

  • Some things that helped us... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chilltowner ( 647305 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @11:44AM (#12100981) Homepage Journal
    I did a double take when I saw the post. My mother-in-law also had a mid-life stroke and was also an accountant.

    Here are some things that have really helped her:

    * Books on tape. Reading a book on paper while hearing the book on tape has done a lot for her reading ability, not to mention being a great activity in general. You can try to find free recordings of public domain books here:
    http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp [audiobooksforfree.com]

    * Cooking. Following recipes is a good way to deal with numbers, words, and their relationships to actual objects. Just measuring things is valuable for getting a sense of amounts.

    All strokes are different, so it's hard to know what exactly will work for everybody. If at all possible, seek out a therapist who deals specifically with stroke patients. He or she may be best suited to figuring out activities that will work best for her.

    I'm very interested in what other people have to say about this, too, since my own family is dealing with these same issues.
  • The first 6 versions were lame. The 7th was fair. V8 works reasonably well. My wife tried an earlier release with much annoyance. V8 makes her happy. She got an upgrade offer which we took advantage of.

    It will also read text-to-speech and support voice control (not sure how well this works). Text to speech requires you open a file in something that allows it to be edited, MSWord, notepad, Dragon's own editor. If it supported a browser it would be a big improvment.

    If you go with this, check suppo

  • a foreign language (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Glog ( 303500 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @01:54PM (#12102471)
    Some of the best exercise a brain can have is trying to learn a new foreign language. Even if the end goal is not to be exactly fluent in it. There is plenty of self-paced software out there - notably the Rosetta Stone series. Good luck!
  • ....on a subject of one of her interests.

    Encourage her to become active on it.

    This will exercise both her memory and typing skills (it's the only reason my teenager learned to type :)

  • Childrens toys/games (Score:3, Informative)

    by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @02:01PM (#12102523)
    Both my parents are speech pathologists (well, dad was then he died but...). Much of what Dad used for helping children develop language (learning disabled, forieng language, etc) was childrens books, Mom uses lots of flash cards and old (no battery) childrens toys as well for helping stroke victims. When I worked in a PT department as an aide, the Occupational Therapist also used lots of childrens toys, and simple things for ADL (activities of daily life) like a set of buttons or snaps on a piece of cloth attached to a wood frame.

    In short, work with a rehab team. They've all gone to school for 4-8 years (or more) to learn how to do it, they are the experts. They can/will assign you things to help her with doing to assist in her recovery.

  • I also suffered a stroke (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I suffered a minor stroke a couple years ago.

    In my case, I (luckily) suffered few physical effects. It did, however, affect my speech to the point that I could not pronounce anything shortly after the stroke.

    Let me tell you what a frustrating thing that is, because mentally I still felt sharp, aware, and able to do normal things. I could hear the words I wanted to say in my head. But as soon as they exited my mouth they were a jumble. Some people thought they needed to treat me like a 2 year old when

  • Software for speech & language therapy at home (Score:3, Informative)

    by ClayN ( 678092 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @02:10PM (#12102645)
    Software for speech and language therapy after stroke or brain injury [strokesoftware.com]

    Windows-based programs were designed by a speech therapist and are easy enough to use independently at home. You can download a free trial.

  • Stroke recovery (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jhon ( 241832 ) * on Thursday March 31, 2005 @02:11PM (#12102652) Homepage Journal
    Back in September, my sister had a stroke (she's in her late 40s). She suffers from expressive aphasia and a very mild receptive aphasia. She has trouble speaking and reading. She understands virtually everything spoken to her but she gets confused when numbers are spoken -- but she can READ and WRITE numbers fine with full understanding. Her reading weakness is with regards to syntax/grammer. Simple sentences she's OK with, but toss in more than Subject-Verb and she struggles. Read it out loud and she understand perfectly.

    I've found the following bits of software helpful:

    Sayzme [sourceforge.net] -- simple text-to-speech software. Anything copied to the clipboard gets read outloud. It takes a little getting used to highlighting/cont-c, but she adapted quickly. She uses it for reading email, internet news sites, and she even types in her own SNAILMAIL and has the PC read it back to her.

    Bungalow Software [bungalowsoftware.com] - There are many worksheets and excercizes available. Download the "shareware" versions and see which ones will best direct your mother's therapy.

    Wizcom [wizcomshop.com] - They have a number of handheld scanner/text-to-speech gizmos. I've yet to get one for my sister, but I will shortly.

    The BEST advice I can give is talk to your mother OFTEN. Get her to excercize her weaknesses EVERYDAY in REAL WORLD situations. My sister is just over 6 months past her stroke and the recovery is amazing. She want from being able to only say 3 or 4 words to being able to communicate with some dificulty (like a stutter). The words she cant "remember" how to say, she can mostly WRITE. It's amazing how she's adapted. She talks -- with a notepad with her. When she hits a word she cant say, she WRITES the word, then READS it out loud.

    If you want to contact me directly, try jhonryan at gmail dot com. I'll be happy to share my experiences with you.
  • Good old "Master Mind", one of the best logical-thinking trainers ever, using numbers instead of colors. This is a single html page with the game entirely embedded in it as Javascript, and compatible with most browsers. The page can be saved locally, so the game can be and played offline. Hope it helps!
  • There's a company that makes speech therapy software [strokesoftware.com] specifically for stroke survivors. There are about 20 different programs for specific areas of speech (saying numbers, word retrieval, aphasia, etc.) Programs were developed with a speech therapist, and have been around for about 10 years now. They're designed for the patient to use *independently* at home, or with the speech therapist.
  • My mother has had two strokes, one in '99 and another one literally one month ago today. She's not all there nowadays, but has recovered a lot. Then again, she wasn't exactly the brightest bulb to begin with. (Not insulting her, just hey, that's my mom.)

    My advice - get rid of her TV. This is the #1 thing you can do for her right now, getting rid of her TV. My mother spent her life sitting in front of the TV stuffing her face and growing more obese. She used this to wallow in her own self-misery and avoidan
  • Maybe the management strategy games like Railroad tycoon woul be helpful - they are (somewhat tedious) fun and you have to remember stats and plan ahead when you are playing them. For an accountant, I suggest something like Tropico ;)
  • I will begin by making the assumption that you know what you are asking for, and that whatever your mothers condition you already know that you need memory software. In my experience there are two good systems for this. The first is SuperMemo. [supermemo.com] SuperMemo is proprietary but it not expensive and it is good for three main reasons.

    1. It tracks progress and has sophisticated algorithums for determining the display of memory items (which is the main variable in how well these programs work)
    2. It has a relativ
  • A good flash-carding program would be very helpful. I can't offer any specific advice, but there was an AskSlashdot question here a few weeks ago about software for helping one learn languages. That's where I found out about the one I'm using.
  • Hello all and thanks for the suggestion. When I was saying cost is not a factor yes at some point it as, and for the time being she sees a team of therapists 5 days a week, but this is only for I think 3 or 4 hours day so she gets bored during the rest of the day after she finishes her "homework". We figured if she is bored, looking for something to do why not something that could help her. (She is used to working 10+ hour days, it's just the way she is and probably one of the reasons she had a stroke, stre
  • There's a methodology being tested in the Arts, Media and Engineering [asu.edu] program at Arizona State University [asu.edu]. It involves using cameras to motion-track the person's movements and associate them with gradiented acoustics (rising / falling tones). It works pretty well, andhelps to retrain the stroke patient's coordination - but it requires some fancy code, a space monitored by a few cameras (iSight [apple.com]'s), a computer to process it all, and some speakers...... and the project is still in-process, so it's about as
  • http://www.setgame.com/ [setgame.com] offers a daily puzzle...if she likes, buy the card game, its only a few bucks. it is a very simple game and yet, seems to take practice for anyone to get faster at it.

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