Myoelectric, Myo-Oxygenation, and Myotonometry Changes during Robot-Assisted Bilateral Arm Exercises with Varying Resistances.

Robot-assisted bilateral arm training has demonstrated its effectiveness in improving motor function in individuals post-stroke, showing significant enhancements with increased repetitions. However, prolonged training sessions may lead to both mental and muscle fatigue. We conducted two types of robot-assisted bimanual wrist exercises on 16 healthy adults, separated by one week: long-duration, low-resistance workouts and short-duration, high-resistance exercises.

Event-related brain potentials reveal enhancing and compensatory mechanisms during dual neurocognitive and cycling tasks.

Background: Various neurocognitive tests have shown that cycling enhances cognitive performance compared to resting. Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by an oddball or flanker task have clarified the impact of dual-task cycling on perception and attention. In this study, we investigate the effect of cycling on cognitive recruitment during tasks that involve not only stimulus identification but also semantic processing and memory retention.

Developmental Traits of Impulse Control Behavior in School Children under Controlled Attention, Motor Function, and Perception.

This research surveyed the characteristics of the developmental traits of impulse control behavior in children through parent-report questionnaires. After matching for gender and attention behavior, as well as controlling for variables (motor and perception) which might confound impulse control, 710 participants (355 girls and 355 boys; grade, 1-5; age, 7-12 years) were recruited from a database of 1763 children. Results demonstrated that there was a significant difference between grade 1 and grade 5 in impulse control.

Resistance-induced brain activity changes during cycle ergometer exercises.

Background: EEGs are frequently employed to measure cerebral activations during physical exercise or in response to specific physical tasks. However, few studies have attempted to understand how exercise-state brain activity is modulated by exercise intensity.

Methods: Ten healthy subjects were recruited for sustained cycle ergometer exercises at low and high resistance, performed on two separate days a week apart.

Left centro-parieto-temporal response to tool-gesture incongruity: an ERP study.

Background: Action semantics have been investigated in relation to context violation but remain less examined in relation to the meaning of gestures. In the present study, we examined tool-gesture incongruity by event-related potentials (ERPs) and hypothesized that the component N400, a neural index which has been widely used in both linguistic and action semantic congruence, is significant for conditions of incongruence.

Methods: Twenty participants performed a tool-gesture judgment task, in which they were asked to judge whether the tool-gesture pairs were correct or incorrect, for the purpose of conveying functional expression of the tools.

Atypical temporal activation pattern and central-right brain compensation during semantic judgment task in children with early left brain damage.

In this study we investigated the event-related potentials (ERPs) during the semantic judgment task (deciding if the two Chinese characters were semantically related or unrelated) to identify the timing of neural activation in children with early left brain damage (ELBD). The results demonstrated that compared with the controls, children with ELBD had (1) competitive accuracy and reaction time in the semantic judgment task, (2) weak operation of the N400, (3) stronger, earlier and later compensational positivities (referred to the enhanced P200, P250, and P600 amplitudes) in the central and right region of the brain to successfully engage in semantic judgment. Our preliminary findings indicate that temporally postlesional reorganization is in accordance with the proposed right-hemispheric organization of speech after early left-sided brain lesion.

Effect of Postural Control Demands on Early Visual Evoked Potentials during a Subjective Visual Vertical Perception Task in Adolescents with Idiopathic Scoliosis.

Subjective visual vertical (SVV) judgment and standing stability were separately investigated among patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Although, one study has investigated the central mechanism of stability control in the AIS population, the relationships between SVV, decreased standing stability, and AIS have never been investigated. Through event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study examined the effect of postural control demands (PDs) on AIS central mechanisms related to SVV judgment and standing stability to elucidate the time-serial stability control process.

Effect of deep pressure input on parasympathetic system in patients with wisdom tooth surgery.

Background/purpose: Deep pressure input is used to normalize physiological arousal due to stress. Wisdom tooth surgery is an invasive dental procedure with high stress levels, and an alleviation strategy is rarely applied during extraction. In this study, we investigated the effects of deep pressure input on autonomic responses to wisdom tooth extraction in healthy adults.

Upper-Limb Rehabilitation With Adaptive Video Games for Preschool Children With Developmental Disabilities.

Objective: This study used a novel device to make video games accessible to children with developmental disabilities (DD) by modifying the training software and interfaces to enhance motor training.

Method: In the pretest-posttest design, 20 children (13 boys, 7 girls; mean age=5.2 yr) with DD received adaptive upper-limb motor rehabilitation consisting of fifteen 30-min individual sessions 3 times per week for 5 wk.

Factor analysis of the contextual fine motor questionnaire in children.

Most studies treat fine motor as one subscale in a developmental test, hence, further factor analysis of fine motor has not been conducted. In fact, fine motor has been treated as a multi-dimensional domain from both clinical and theoretical perspectives, and therefore to know its factors would be valuable. The aim of this study is to analyze the internal consistency and factor validity of the Contextual Fine Motor Questionnaire (CFMQ).

Event-related evoked potentials in Alzheimer's disease by a tool-using gesture paradigm.

The Alzheimer's disease (AD) has a wide spectrum of symptoms, ranging from cognition dysfunction to behavior disturbances and functional impairment. The evoked cerebral potentials by specific paradigms are useful for disclosing neuropsychological activities. The evolution of AD is accompanied by progressive cognitive impairment which may result in a difficulty to recognize or comprehend gestures.

Effects of visual rehabilitation on a child with severe visual impairment.

We examined the effects of visual rehabilitation, including a chromatic luminance discrimination program and a fixation training program, on a 6-yr-old boy with severe visual impairment. Single-subject ABA and AB designs were used. The programs were conducted 2×/wk and included 6 to 7 sessions for the baseline phase and 10 to 11 sessions for the intervention phase.

The effect of direction on cursor moving kinematics.

There have been only few studies to substantiate the kinematic characteristics of cursor movement. In this study, a quantitative experimental research method was used to explore the effect of moving direction on the kinematics of cursor movement in 24 typical young persons using our previously developed computerized measuring program. The results of multiple one way repeated measures ANOVAs and post hoc LSD tests demonstrated that the moving direction had effects on average velocity, movement time, movement unit and peak velocity.

Brain connectivity of patients with Alzheimer's disease by coherence and cross mutual information of electroencephalograms during photic stimulation.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease, usually diagnosed by neuropsychological tests, and excluded from other cerebral diseases by brain images. An electroencephalogram (EEG) provides a means of disclosing the reduced functional couplings between brain regions that occurs with AD. In the present study, 16 probable AD patients and 15 age-matched, gender-matched normal subjects were enrolled.

Coincidence of homophone spelling errors and attention problems in schoolchildren: a survey study.

This article examines the relationship between writing and attention problems and hypothesizes that homophone spelling errors coincide with attention deficits. We analyze specific types of attention deficits, which may contribute to Attention Deficits Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); rather than studying ADHD, however, we focus on the inattention dimension of behavior. Our methodology was to develop a survey study for exploring the coincidence of homophone errors and attention problems in schoolchildren.

The removal of ocular artifacts from EEG signals using adaptive filters based on ocular source components.

Ocular artifacts are the most important form of interference in electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. An adaptive filter based on reference signals from an electrooculogram (EOG) can reduce ocular interference, but collecting EOG signals during a long-term EEG recording is inconvenient and uncomfortable for the patient. In contrast, blind source separation (BSS) is a method of decomposing multiple EEG channels into an equal number of source components (SCs) by independent component analysis.

The performance of mouse pointing and selecting for pupils with and without intellectual disabilities.

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of mouse pointing and selecting in the tasks with different index of difficulty between 20 pupils with intellectual disabilities and 21 pupils without disabilities. A mouse proficiency assessment software was utilized to collect data. Pupils with intellectual disabilities executed tasks more correctly in bigger target even in tasks with the same index of difficulty.

Hemispheric Lateralization of Event-Related Brain Potentials in Different Processing Phases during Unimanual Finger Movements.

Previous functional MRI and brain electrophysiology studies have studied the left-right differences during the tapping tasks and found that the activation of left hemisphere was more significant than that of right hemisphere. In this study, we wanted to delineate this lateralization phenomenon not only in the execution phase but also in other processing phases, such as early visual, pre-executive and post-executive phases. We have designed a finger-tapping task to delineate the left-right differences of event related potentials (ERPs) to right finger movement in sixteen right handed college students.

The rate of handedness conversion and related factors in left-handed children.

The rate of handedness conversion was 2.7% to 11.8% in prior studies based on the total population including innately right-handed people.