Towards Science-Based Neurorehabilitation

This chapter will introduce the book and explain the mission of the book. Current neurorehabilitation is to some extent based on theoretical concepts with little scientific evidence. Not all existing interventions, procedures, and techniques have sufficient scientific evidence to demonstrate that they work, and the experience of individual therapists and traditional approaches in local rehabilitation units are often the main reason for using specific interventions. Providing solid scientific evidence of each rehabilitation procedure is costly and will take decades to achieve. It may also be questioned whether it is necessary to demonstrate the efficiency of all existing rehabilitation techniques and procedures in expensive randomized clinical studies, since many of the techniques that are used in routine clinical practice are unlikely to have any effect with our current understanding of how the nervous system and the human body function. It is possible to save time, money, resources, and probably also lives if knowledge from human neurobiology is used to focus on therapies and procedures that are the most likely to work in practice. This will simplify the efforts that need to be put into providing evidence of which therapies and procedures work the best. The book is based on this fundamental idea.