Unilateral baseball pitching: morphological and functional adaptations in the neck muscles.

Background: Functional asymmetry and muscle imbalances are recognized as contributors to injury risk in athletes. Sports with repetitive unilateral movements such as baseball pitching can lead to adaptations in shoulder and scapular muscles. There is a lack of research on whether these movements result in neck muscle alterations.

"Teaching somebody else makes you a better person:" A phenomenological exploration of the importance of informal peer support for individuals with spinal cord injury.

Background: Peer support is widely recognized as an important aspect of health promotion for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). Reports indicate positive effects for the recipients of either informal and formal peer support. The experience can also be meaningful to the person(s) providing support, although the value to providers is not well studied.

"It Helps Me With Everything": A Qualitative Study of the Importance of Exercise for Individuals With Spinal Cord Injury.

Background: The influence of exercise after spinal cord injury (SCI) is a topic important to both clinicians and researchers. The impact of exercise for individuals with SCI is often studied quantitively, with a large focus on the physiological adaptations to exercise intervention.

Objectives: This study explores individualized experiences of exercise for people with SCI.

Electromyography-Driven Exergaming in Wheelchairs on a Mobile Platform: Bench and Pilot Testing of the WOW-Mobile Fitness System.

Background: Implementing exercises in the form of video games, otherwise known as exergaming, has gained recent attention as a way to combat health issues resulting from sedentary lifestyles. However, these exergaming apps have not been developed for exercises that can be performed in wheelchairs, and they tend to rely on whole-body movements.

Objective: This study aims to develop a mobile phone app that implements electromyography (EMG)-driven exergaming, to test the feasibility of using this app to enable people in wheelchairs to perform exergames independently and flexibly in their own home, and to assess the perceived usefulness and usability of this mobile health system.

Cloud-based Multiplayer Exergaming: Developing a platform for social interaction as a motivational tool for exercising in the wheelchair community.

In the recent decade, mobile exergaming has emerged as a way to motivate physical activity and thereby increase fitness. It has been found that those which encourage social interaction and multiplayer gaming leads to better fitness outcomes than single player games [1]. However, none have yet to tailor exergames for people who use wheelchairs due to lower mobility impairment.

Association between muscle aerobic capacity and whole-body peak oxygen uptake.

Purpose: Decline in skeletal muscle mitochondrial oxidative capacity (MOC) is associated with reduced aerobic capacity and increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Measuring skeletal muscle MOC may be an alternative method to assess aerobic capacity, especially for individuals unable to perform a whole-body maximum oxygen uptake protocol. In this study, linear regression analysis in two leg muscles was performed to determine whether MOC values could be used to predict whole-body peak oxygen uptake.

The Utility of Interappendicular Connections in Bipedal Locomotion.

Homo sapiens constitute the only currently obligate bipedal mammals and, as it stands, upright bipedal locomotion is a defining characteristic of humans. Indeed, while the evolution to bipedalism has allowed for the upper limbs to be liberated from ground contact during ambulation, their role in locomotion is far from obsolete. Rather, there is reason to believe that arm swing offers important mechanical and neurological advantages to bipedal locomotion.

What Did We Learn from the Animal Studies of Body Weight-Supported Treadmill Training and Where Do We Go from Here?

Body weight-supported treadmill training (BWSTT) developed from animal studies of spinal cord injury (SCI). Evidence that spinal cats (i.e.

Energy expenditure and heart rate responses to increased loading in individuals with motor complete spinal cord injury performing body weight-supported exercises.

Objective: To examine acute metabolic and heart rate responses in individuals with motor complete spinal cord injury (SCI) during stepping and standing with body weight support (BWS).

Design: Cohort study.

Setting: Therapeutic exercise research laboratory.

Spinal segment-specific transcutaneous stimulation differentially shapes activation pattern among motor pools in humans.

Transcutaneous and epidural electrical spinal cord stimulation techniques are becoming more valuable as electrophysiological and clinical tools. Recently, we observed selective activation of proximal and distal motor pools during epidural spinal stimulation. In the present study, we hypothesized that the characteristics of recruitment curves obtained from leg muscles will reflect a relative preferential activation of proximal and distal motor pools based on their arrangement along the lumbosacral enlargement.

Phase-dependent modulation of percutaneously elicited multisegmental muscle responses after spinal cord injury.

Phase-dependent modulation of monosynaptic reflexes has been reported for several muscles of the lower limb of uninjured rats and humans. To assess whether this step-phase-dependent modulation can be mediated at the level of the human spinal cord, we compared the modulation of responses evoked simultaneously in multiple motor pools in clinically complete spinal cord injury (SCI) compared with noninjured (NI) individuals. We induced multisegmental responses of the soleus, medial gastrocnemius, tibialis anterior, medial hamstring, and vastus lateralis muscles in response to percutaneous spinal cord stimulation over the Th11-Th12 vertebrae during standing and stepping on a treadmill.

Facilitation of stepping with epidural stimulation in spinal rats: role of sensory input.

We investigated the role of afferent information during recovery of coordinated rhythmic activity of the hindlimbs in rats with a complete spinal cord section (approximately T8) and unilateral deafferentation (T12-S2) to answer the following questions: (1) Can bilateral stepping be generated with only afferent projections intact on one side? (2) Can the sensory input from the non-deafferented side compensate for the loss of the afferent input from the deafferented side through the crossed connections within the lumbosacral spinal cord? (3) Which afferent projections to the spinal cord from the non-deafferented side predominantly mediate the effect of epidural stimulation to facilitate stepping? Recovery of stepping ability was tested under the facilitating influence of epidural stimulation at the S1 spinal segment, or epidural stimulation plus quipazine, a 5-HT agonist. All chronic spinal rats were able to generate stepping-like patterns on a moving treadmill on the non-deafferented, but not deafferented, side from 3 to 7 weeks after surgery when facilitated by epidural stimulation. Adaptation to the loss of unilateral afferent input was evident at 7 weeks after surgery, when some movements occurred on the deafferented side.

Epidural stimulation induced modulation of spinal locomotor networks in adult spinal rats.

The importance of the in vivo dynamic nature of the circuitries within the spinal cord that generate locomotion is becoming increasingly evident. We examined the characteristics of hindlimb EMG activity evoked in response to epidural stimulation at the S1 spinal cord segment in complete midthoracic spinal cord-transected rats at different stages of postlesion recovery. A progressive and phase-dependent modulation of monosynaptic (middle) and long-latency (late) stimulation-evoked EMG responses was observed throughout the step cycle.

Modulation of multisegmental monosynaptic responses in a variety of leg muscles during walking and running in humans.

Motor responses evoked by stimulating the spinal cord percutaneously between the T11 and T12 spinous processes were studied in eight human subjects during walking and running. Stimulation elicited responses bilaterally in the biceps femoris, vastus lateralis, rectus femoris, medial gastrocnemius, soleus, tibialis anterior, extensor digitorum brevis and flexor digitorum brevis. The evoked responses were consistent with activation of Ia afferent fibres through monosynaptic neural circuits since they were inhibited when a prior stimulus was given and during tendon vibration.

Altered frontocortical, cerebellar, and basal ganglia activity in adjuvant-treated breast cancer survivors 5-10 years after chemotherapy.

Purpose: To explore the relationship of regional cerebral blood flow and metabolism with cognitive function and past exposure to chemotherapy for breast cancer.

Patients And Methods: Subjects treated for breast cancer with adjuvant chemotherapy remotely (5-10 years previously) were studied with neuropsychologic testing and positron emission tomography (PET), and were compared with control subjects who had never received chemotherapy. [O-15] water PET scans was acquired during performance of control and memory-related tasks to evaluate cognition-related cerebral blood flow, and [F-18] fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET scans were acquired to evaluate resting cerebral metabolism.

Spinal cord reflexes induced by epidural spinal cord stimulation in normal awake rats.

Motor responses in hindlimb muscles to epidural spinal cord stimulation in normal awake rats during bipedal standing were studied. Stimulation at L2 or S1 induced simultaneous and bilateral responses in the vastus lateralis, semitendinosus, tibialis anterior, and medial gastrocnemius muscles. Stimulation at S1 evoked an early (ER), middle (MR) and late (LR) response: stimulation at L2 elicited only a MR and LR.

Dissociable correlates of recollection and familiarity within the medial temporal lobes.

Regions in the medial temporal lobes (MTL) have long been implicated in the formation of new memories for events, however, it is unclear whether different MTL subregions support different memory processes. Here, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the degree to which two recognition memory processes-recollection and familiarity-were supported by different MTL subregions. Results showed that encoding activity in the rhinal cortex selectively predicted familiarity-based recognition, whereas, activity in the hippocampus and posterior parahippocampal cortex selectively predicted recollection.