Scientifically, to "rehabilitate" implies to engage in a rehabilitative process yielding improvement in function that is beyond any spontaneous recovery. 

Medical rehabilitation exists because there is evidence - unfortunately mostly heuristic - that there is merit to intervention by professionals trained in the art and science of rehabilitative service provision. The functional principles and processes underlying rehabilitative adaptive and healing phenomena, summarized in the figure below, remain an active area of discovery.

The underlying motivation is a fundamental principle: that tissues and systems of cells - ranging from connective soft tissue to muscle to neurocircuitry - can "remodel" as long as there is access to an adequate internal support infrastructure (e.g., blood supply), and the involved structures are "used" appropriately.  The latter represents a great scientific challenge, given the complexity of the human system and its adaptive processes.

But this science must also consider pragmatic realities related to rehabilitation infrastructure. For instance, when viewed within the context of a "continuum of care," the reality is that most rehabilitation care is by way of "outpatient" therapy, delivered as a finite series of bolus interventions.  Also, since the patient or client resides outside of the clinic (e.g., home, work), typically there is no sampling of the subsequent dynamic temporal response from such interventions.  

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