Publications by authors named "Alberto Nascimbeni"

Hemiplegia is a neurological disorder that is often detected in children with cerebral palsy. Although many studies have investigated muscular activity in hemiplegic legs, few EMG-based findings focused on unaffected limb. This study aimed to quantify the asymmetric behavior of lower-limb-muscle recruitment during walking in mild-hemiplegic children from surface-EMG and foot-floor contact features.

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EMG-based differences between females and males during walking are generally acknowledged in adults. Aim of the study was the quantification of possible gender differences in myoelectric activity of gastrocnemius lateralis (GL) and tibialis anterior (TA) during walking in school-age children. Gender-related comparison with adults was also provided to get possible novel insight in maturation of gait.

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Purpose: The study was designed to assess the co-contractions of tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius lateralis (GL) in healthy school-age children during gait at self-selected speed and cadence, in terms of variability of onset-offset muscular activation and occurrence frequency.

Methods: Statistical gait analysis, a recent methodology performing a statistical characterization of gait by averaging spatio-temporal and sEMG-based parameters over numerous strides, was performed in 100 healthy children, aged 6-11 years. Co-contractions were assessed as the period of overlap between activation intervals of TA and GL.

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In clinical gait analysis is fundamental to have access to normative data, to be used as a reference in the interpretation of pathological walking. In a paediatric population this may be complicated by the dependence of gait parameters on child growth. The aim of this work is to provide the correlations of spatial-temporal gait parameters with children's height.

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Background: Previous literature hypothesized that Winters type I are mainly characterized by a hypo-activation of dorsiflexors and type II by hyperactivation of plantarflexors around initial contact. However, it is currently not known if hemiplegic children belonging to the same Winters class really share the same muscle activation patterns, although this information might have relevant clinical implications in the patient management.

Methods: Gait data of 38 hemiplegic cerebral palsy children (16 Winters type I, 22 Winters type II) were analyzed, focusing on the foot and shank.

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Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) entails a high risk of developing Alzheimer's dementia. In MCI patients gait impairment, which increases the risk of falls and institutionalization, is an early motor sign. A dualtask (DT) paradigm might improve the observation of this phenomenon.

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Gait is an attention-demanding task even in healthy young adults. However, scant evidence exists about the attentional load required at various walking speeds. The aim of this study was to investigate motor-cognitive interference while walking at spontaneous, slow and very slow speed on a treadmill while carrying out a backward counting task, in a group (n = 22) of healthy young participants.

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Purpose: Incontinentia pigmenti (IP), or Bloch-Sulzberger syndrome, is a rare X-linked dominant genetic disorder with multisystem involvement. To our knowledge, there are no previous reports about rehabilitation in IP adult with intact cognitive development. We report a 20-year-old lady with IP managed and followed into adulthood.

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It has been demonstrated that automated locomotor training can improve walking capabilities in spinal cord-injured subjects but its effectiveness on brain damaged patients has not been well established. A possible explanation of the discordant results on the efficacy of robotic training in patients with cerebral lesions could be that these patients, besides stimulation of physiological motor patterns through passive leg movements, also need to train the cognitive aspects of motor control. Indeed, another way to stimulate cerebral motor areas in paretic patients is to use the cognitive function of motor imagery.

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Background: Vestibular patients show slower and unsteady gait; they have also been shown to need greater cognitive resources when carrying out balance and cognitive dual tasks (DT). This study investigated DT interference during gait in a middle-aged group of subjects with dizziness and unsteadiness after unilateral vestibular neuronitis and in a healthy control group.

Methods: Fourteen individuals with subacute unilateral vestibular impairment after neuronitis and seventeen healthy subjects performed gait and cognitive tasks in single and DT conditions.

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Accurate motor and functional prognosis after stroke is important for the optimal planning of a personalised rehabilitation programme, and clinical, demographic and radiological data are commonly employed for this purpose. It is becoming increasingly apparent that motor evoked potentials (MEPs), obtained through transcranial magnetic stimulation, can furnish complementary prognostic information on motor outcome after stroke, particularly when initial hand palsy is present. To evaluate the prognostic value of early MEPs together with other clinical variables, 19 subjects with first- ever stroke in the middle cerebral artery territory and hand palsy at onset, were evaluated in the acute phase.

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