Although digital mobility outcomes (DMOs) can be readily calculated from real-world data collected with wearable devices and ad-hoc algorithms, technical validation is still required. The aim of this paper is to comparatively assess and validate DMOs estimated using real-world gait data from six different cohorts, focusing on gait sequence detection, foot initial contact...
Wearable sensor technology can facilitate diagnostics and monitoring of people with upper extremity (UE) paresis after stroke. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perspectives of clinicians, people living with stroke, and their caregivers on an interactive wearable system that detects UE movements and provides feedback. This qualitative study used semi-structured...
In severe conditions of limited motor abilities, frequent position changes for work or passive and active rest are essential bedside activities to prevent further health complications. We aimed to develop a system using eye movements for bed positioning and to verify its functionality in a control group and a group of patients with significant motor limitation caused by multiple...
In post-stroke rehabilitation, positive use of affected limbs in daily life is important to improve affected upper-limb function. Several studies have quantitatively evaluated the amount of upper-limb activity, but few have measured finger usage. In this study, we used a ring-shaped wearable device to measure upper-limb and finger usage simultaneously in hospitalized patients...
Electrical nerve conduction block has great potential for treatment of disease through reversible and local inactivation of somatic and autonomic nerves. However, the relatively high energy requirements and the presence of undesired excitation at the onset of the kilohertz-frequency (KHF) signals used for block pose obstacles to effective translation. Frequency, electrode...
Robot-assisted gait therapy is frequently used for gait therapy in children and adolescents but has been shown to limit the physiological excursions of the trunk and pelvis. Actuated pelvis movements might support more physiological trunk patterns during robot-assisted training. However, not every patient is expected to react identically to actuated pelvis movements. Therefore...
Presentation of visual stimuli can induce changes in EEG signals that are typically detectable by averaging together data from multiple trials for individual participant analysis as well as for groups or conditions analysis of multiple participants. This study proposes a new method based on the discrete wavelet transform with Huffman coding and machine learning for single-trial...
Exoskeletons are becoming the reference technology for assistance and augmentation of human motor functions in a wide range of application domains. Unfortunately, the exponential growth of this sector has not been accompanied by a rigorous risk assessment (RA) process, which is necessary to identify the major aspects concerning the safety and impact of this new technology on...
Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a highly prevalent disease with poorly understood underlying mechanisms. In particular, altered trunk muscle coordination in response to specific trunk tasks remains largely unknown. We investigated the muscle synergies during 11 trunk movement and stability tasks in 15 healthy individuals (8 females and 7 males, aged 21. 3 (20.1–22.8) ± 0.6 years...
Upper-limb rehabilitation robots provide repetitive reaching movement training to post-stroke patients. Beyond a pre-determined set of movements, a robot-aided training protocol requires optimization to account for the individuals’ unique motor characteristics. Therefore, an objective evaluation method should consider the pre-stroke motor performance of the affected arm to...
Upper limb impairments in a hemiparetic arm are clinically quantified by well-established clinical scales, known to suffer poor validity, reliability, and sensitivity. Alternatively, robotics can assess motor impairments by characterizing joint dynamics through system identification. In this study, we establish the merits of quantifying abnormal synergy, spasticity, and changes...
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is associated with interoceptive deficits expressed throughout the body, particularly the facial musculature. According to the facial feedback hypothesis, afferent feedback from the facial muscles suffices to alter the emotional experience. Thus, manipulating the facial muscles could provide a new “mind-body” intervention for MDD. This article...
Hereditary motor and sensory neuropathies (HMSN), also known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, are characterized by affected peripheral nerves. This often results in foot deformities that can be classified into four categories: (1) plantar flexed first metatarsal, neutral hindfoot, (2) plantar flexed first metatarsal, correctable hindfoot varus, (3) plantar flexed first metatarsal...
Neuromuscular disease and peripheral neuropathy may cause drop foot with or without evertor weakness. We developed a helical-shaped, non-articulated ankle–foot orthosis (AFO) to provide medial–lateral stability while allowing mobility, to improve gait capacity. Our aim was to evaluate the effect of the helical AFO (hAFO) on functional gait capacity (6-min walk test) in people...
The aging of the population and the progressive increase of life expectancy in developed countries is leading to a high incidence of age-related cerebrovascular diseases, which affect people’s motor and cognitive capabilities and might result in the loss of arm and hand functions. Such conditions have a detrimental impact on people’s quality of life. Assistive robots have been...
Nowadays, wearable sensors are widely used to quantify physical and motor activity during daily life, and they also represent innovative solutions for healthcare. In the clinical framework, the assessment of motor behaviour is entrusted to clinical scales, but they are dependent on operator experience. Thanks to their intrinsic objectivity, sensor data are extremely useful to...
Brain-computer interface (BCI) has helped people by allowing them to control a computer or machine through brain activity without actual body movement. Despite this advantage, BCI cannot be used widely because some people cannot achieve controllable performance. To solve this problem, researchers have proposed stimulation methods to modulate relevant brain activity to improve BCI...
Multiple studies have corroborated the restoration of volitional motor control after motor-complete spinal cord injury (SCI) through the use of epidural spinal cord stimulation (eSCS), but rigorous quantitative descriptions of muscle coordination have been lacking. Six participants with chronic, motor and sensory complete SCI underwent a brain motor control assessment (BMCA...
Markerless motion capture (MMC) technology has been developed to avoid the need for body marker placement during motion tracking and analysis of human movement. Although researchers have long proposed the use of MMC technology in clinical measurement—identification and measurement of movement kinematics in a clinical population, its actual application is still in its preliminary...
After above-knee amputation, the missing biological knee and ankle are replaced with passive prosthetic devices. Passive prostheses are able to dissipate limited amounts of energy using resistive damper systems during “negative energy” tasks like sit-down. However, passive prosthetic knees are not able to provide high levels of resistance at the end of the sit-down movement when...
Compensatory movements are commonly observed in older adults with stroke during upper extremity (UE) motor rehabilitation, which could limit their motor recovery. This study aims to develop a compensation-aware virtual rehabilitation system (VRS) that can detect compensatory movements and improve the outcome of UE rehabilitation in community-dwelling older adults with stroke. The...
An incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI) refers to remaining sensorimotor function below the injury with the possibility for the patient to regain walking abilities. However, these patients often suffer from diverse gait deficits, which are not objectively assessed in the current clinical routine. Wearable inertial sensors are a promising tool to capture gait patterns objectively...
We have developed a wearable rehabilitation robot, “curara®,” and examined its immediate effect in patients with spinocerebellar degeneration and stroke, but its rehabilitative effect has not been clarified. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of this device on gait training in stroke patients. Forty stroke patients were enrolled in this study. The participants...