Fig. 1

Illustration of experimental data collection procedure. Subjects were seated in front of a computer monitor with the sleeve on their impaired arm, and their arms placed on the table. The sleeve was connected to a custom-built EMG signal acquisition module, which then connected to a laptop computer. Images of hand postures were shown on the monitor and the subject followed along to the best of their ability. Each recording block was approximately 2–3 min in length and involved hand posture cues interleaved with rest periods. The recording block began with an 8-s lead in rest period. Each cue and rest period presentation time were randomly selected between 4 and 6 s for subjects with stroke. An operator ran the data collection software and observed EMG signals during data collection to ensure proper recording of data