Relationship of Community Mobility, Vital Space, and Faller Status in Older Adults.

Unlabelled: Community mobility, encompassing both active (e.g., walking) and passive (e.

Behavioral patterns in elderly single-person households.

The global rise in the aging population and the increase in older adults living alone have raised concerns about health-related behaviors, particularly sedentary lifestyles and reduced daily activities. These behaviors are linked to higher risks of physical and cognitive conditions. While many global studies have explored these patterns, research within the Chilean context remains limited.

Modeling the effect of postgraduate courses on soft skills: a practical approach.

Over the last decade, Higher Education has focused more of its attention toward soft skills compared to traditional technical skills. Nevertheless, there are not many studies concerning the relation between the courses followed within an academic program and the development of soft skills. This work presents a practical approach to model the effects of courses on soft skills proficiency.

Hierarchical classification scheme for real-time recognition of physical activities and postural transitions using smartphone inertial sensors.

This paper introduces a novel approach for real-time classification of human activities using data from inertial sensors embedded in a smartphone. We propose a hierarchical classification scheme to recognize seven classes of activities including postural transitions. Its structure has three internal nodes composed of three Support Vector Machines (SVMs) classifiers, each one is associated with a set of activities.

Assessment of attention demand for balance control using a Smartphone: implementation and evaluation.

Dual-task paradigm studies strongly highlights the importance of considering attention demand when assessing the ability of an individual to control balance. This paper introduces the implementation of a Smartphone application for quantitative and independent assessment of attention demand for balance control. A proof-of-concept study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the iBalance system in assessing the attention demand for balance control.

Applying Entropy to Human Center of Foot Pressure Data to Assess Attention Investment in Balance Control.

Assessing the amount of attention invested in the control of balance is crucial when evaluating balance abilities. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relevance of applying entropy to human center of foot pressure data to assess attention investment in balance control. To achieve this goal, young healthy adults were tested in a static postural task consisting in standing as immobile as possible with their eyes closed under normal, altered (foam) and improved (ankle-foot orthosis).

Mobile Phone-Based Joint Angle Measurement for Functional Assessment and Rehabilitation of Proprioception.

Assessment of joint functional and proprioceptive abilities is essential for balance, posture, and motor control rehabilitation. Joint functional ability refers to the capacity of movement of the joint. It may be evaluated thereby measuring the joint range of motion (ROM).

Performance Evaluation of Smartphone Inertial Sensors Measurement for Range of Motion.

Over the years, smartphones have become tools for scientific and clinical research. They can, for instance, be used to assess range of motion and joint angle measurement. In this paper, our aim was to determine if smartphones are reliable and accurate enough for clinical motion research.

SVM-based multimodal classification of activities of daily living in Health Smart Homes: sensors, algorithms, and first experimental results.

By 2050, about one third of the French population will be over 65. Our laboratory's current research focuses on the monitoring of elderly people at home, to detect a loss of autonomy as early as possible. Our aim is to quantify criteria such as the international activities of daily living (ADL) or the French Autonomie Gerontologie Groupes Iso-Ressources (AGGIR) scales, by automatically classifying the different ADL performed by the subject during the day.

Supervised classification of Activities of Daily Living in Health Smart Homes using SVM.

By 2050, about a third of the French population will be over 65. To face this modification of the population, the current studies of our laboratory focus on the monitoring of elderly people at home. This aims at detect, as early as possible, a loss of autonomy by objectivizing criterions such as the international ADL or the French AGGIR scales implementing automatic classification of the different Activities of Daily Living.

Test-retest reliability of cervicocephalic relocation test to neutral head position.

Considering the important role of the cervical joint position sense on control of human posture and locomotion, accurate and reliable evaluation of neck proprioceptive abilities appears of great importance. Although the cervicocephalic relocation test (CRT) to the neutral head position (NHP) usually is used for both research and clinical purposes, its test-retest reliability has not been clearly established yet. The purpose of the present experiment was to 1) evaluate the test-retest reliability of the CRT to NHP and 2) to determine the number of trial recordings required to ensure reliable measurements.

Effectiveness of an electro-tactile vestibular substitution system in improving upright postural control in unilateral vestibular-defective patients.

We investigated the effects of an electro-tactile vestibular substitution system (EVSS) on upright postural control in 12 unilateral vestibular-defective patients. The underlying principle of this system consists in supplying the user with additional information about his/her head orientation/motion with respect to gravitational vertical, normally provided by the vestibular system, through electro-tactile stimulation of his/her tongue. Subjects were asked to stand as immobile as possible with their eyes closed in two No-EVSS and EVSS conditions.

Postural destabilization induced by trunk extensor muscles fatigue is suppressed by use of a plantar pressure-based electro-tactile biofeedback.

Separate studies have reported that postural control during quiet standing could be (1) impaired with muscle fatigue localized at the lower back, and (2) improved through the use of plantar pressure-based electro-tactile biofeedback, under normal neuromuscular state. The aim of this experiment was to investigate whether this biofeedback could reduce postural destabilization induced by trunk extensor muscles. Ten healthy adults were asked to stand as immobile as possible in four experimental conditions: (1) no fatigue/no biofeedback, (2) no fatigue/biofeedback, (3) fatigue/no biofeedback and (4) fatigue/biofeedback.