Sensory substitution of elbow proprioception to improve myoelectric control of upper limb prosthesis: experiment on healthy subjects and amputees.

Background: Current myoelectric prostheses lack proprioceptive information and rely on vision for their control. Sensory substitution is increasingly developed with non-invasive vibrotactile or electrotactile feedback, but most systems are designed for grasping or object discriminations, and few were tested for online control in amputees. The objective of this work was evaluate the effect of a novel vibrotactile feedback on the accuracy of myoelectric control of a virtual elbow by healthy subjects and participants with an upper-limb amputation at humeral level.

L-DOPA and 5-HTP modulation of air-stepping in newborn rats.

Key Points: In newborn rats, L-DOPA increases the occurrence of air-stepping activity without affecting movement characteristics. L-DOPA administration increases the spinal content of dopamine in a dose-dependent manner. Injection of 5-HTP increases the spinal serotonin content but does not trigger air-stepping.

Shoulder kinematics plus contextual target information enable control of multiple distal joints of a simulated prosthetic arm and hand.

Background: Prosthetic restoration of reach and grasp function after a trans-humeral amputation requires control of multiple distal degrees of freedom in elbow, wrist and fingers. However, such a high level of amputation reduces the amount of available myoelectric and kinematic information from the residual limb.

Methods: To overcome these limits, we added contextual information about the target's location and orientation such as can now be extracted from gaze tracking by computer vision tools.

Correction to: Effect of vibration characteristics and vibror arrangement on the tactile perception of the upper arm in healthy subjects and upper limb amputees.

The original article [1] contained an error whereby the captions to Fig. 3 and Fig. 8 were mistakenly interchanged.

Effect of vibration characteristics and vibror arrangement on the tactile perception of the upper arm in healthy subjects and upper limb amputees.

Background: Vibrotactile stimulation is a promising venue in the field of prosthetics to retrain sensory feedback deficits following amputation. Discrimination is well established at the forearm level but not at the upper arm level. Moreover, the effects of combining vibration characteristics such as duration and intensity has never been investigated.

Reachy, a 3D-Printed Human-Like Robotic Arm as a Testbed for Human-Robot Control Strategies.

To this day, despite the increasing motor capability of robotic devices, elaborating efficient control strategies is still a key challenge in the field of humanoid robotic arms. In particular, providing a human "pilot" with efficient ways to drive such a robotic arm requires thorough testing prior to integration into a finished system. Additionally, when it is needed to preserve anatomical consistency between pilot and robot, such testing requires to employ devices showing human-like features.

Differential Alteration in Expression of Striatal GABAR Subunits in Mouse Models of Huntington's Disease.

Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive motor symptoms that are preceded by cognitive deficits and is considered as a disorder that primarily affects forebrain striatal neurons. To gain a better understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms associated with disease progression, we analyzed the expression of proteins involved in GABAergic neurotransmission in the striatum of the R6/1 transgenic mouse model. Western blot, quantitative PCR and immunohistochemical analyses were conducted on male R6/1 mice and age-matched wild type littermates.