1. Introduction
cerebral palsy
CEREBRAL PALSY
Limited hand function in children with unilateral cerebral palsy (uCP) reduces their opportunities to participate in daily life activities and might, in turn, affect their quality of life [International clinical practice guidelines recommend early intervention with intensive task-specific training and parental coaching [We, therefore, developed a novel tool and training aiming to improve attention towards the contralesional upper limb: Multisensory Stimulation and Priming (MuSSAP). Repeatedly applying rhythmically synchronous multisensory stimulation has been proposed to be helpful in provoking attention and to facilitate readiness to initiate a goal-directed movement (i.e., priming effect) at the stimulated side [The primary aim of this pilot Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) was to explore the short-term effect of EI-UL compared to EI-UL with integrated MuSSAP training (EI-UL–MuSSAP) on the improvement of manual ability in infants with a unilateral brain lesion. In addition, we aimed to explore the individual developmental trajectories regarding self-initiated goal-directed movements in both groups and attention in the EI-UL–MuSSAP training group, and to evaluate the feasibility of the training.