Date Submitted
9-12-2025
Faculty Advisor
Jennifer Fugate
Abstract
Ischemic strokes, the blockage of blood flow to the brain, are the most common type of stroke that affects adults worldwide and is the fifth most common cause of death. Stroke survivors experience physical and cognitive aftermaths, which gravely impact their quality of life and activities of daily living. Current standards for post-stroke treatment highlight the importance of early detection, medication, and neurorehabilitation. Standard neurorehabilitation techniques encompass a multidisciplinary approach involving patients, caregivers, and treatment teams. Although the body and movement are essential for the recovery of stroke, few studies examine how embodied treatments play a role in the neurorehabilitation of post-stroke symptoms. Embodied treatments are based on embodied cognition (EC), a theoretical framework that postulates that the brain works in bidirectional pathways through the connection of the body and mind. Thus, EC treatments focus on how the body and its presence in the environment significantly affect cognition and emotion. Therefore, it is proposed that embodied treatments are beneficial for stroke rehabilitation. Thus, a systematic narrative literature review was utilized to explore the effectiveness and usefulness of embodied treatments in the neurorehabilitation of physical, cognitive, and psychiatric post-stroke symptoms. Treatment effectiveness was operationalized with three tables for each treatment outcome (i.e., physical, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms). Each table evaluated the studies’ sample, design, methodology, effect sizes, and level of embodiment, as measured with the Level of Embodiment Rubric.
