Optimizing time-in-target-range assessment for blood pressure: insights from a large-scale study with continual cuffless monitoring.

Introduction: Blood pressure (BP) time-in-target-range (TTR) is an emerging predictor of cardiovascular risk. Conventional BP methods are fundamentally unable to provide an optimal assessment of TTR, using irregular measurements separated by lengthy intervals. We investigated the optimal duration and frequency for reliable, practical TTR assessment in clinical settings using continual monitoring.

Aktiia cuffless blood pressure monitor yields equivalent daytime blood pressure measurements compared to a 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitor: Preliminary results from a prospective single-center study.

In this preliminary study, we compared daytime blood pressure (BP) measurements performed by a commercially available cuffless-and continual-BP monitor (Aktiia monitor, Neuchâtel, Switzerland) and a traditional ambulatory BP monitor (ABPM; Dyasis 3, Novacor, Paris, France) from 52 patients enrolled in a 12-week cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program (Neuchâtel, Switzerland). Daytime (9am-9pm) systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) BP from 7-day averaged data from Aktiia monitor were compared to 1-day averaged BP data from ABPM. No significant differences were found between the Aktiia monitor and the ABPM for SBP (μ ± σ [95% confidence interval]: 1.

Guidance for the Interpretation of Continual Cuffless Blood Pressure Data for the Diagnosis and Management of Hypertension.

Hypertension remains the leading risk factor for death worldwide. Despite its prevalence, success of blood pressure (BP) management efforts remains elusive, and part of the difficulty lies in the tool still used to diagnose, measure, and treat hypertension: the sphygmomanometer introduced by Samuel Siegfried Karl von Basch in 1867. In recent years, there has been an explosion of devices attempting to provide estimates of BP without a cuff, overcoming many limitations of cuff-based BP monitors.

Beyond variability: Subjective timing and the neurophysiology of motor cognition.

Background: Movement simulation helps increasing the chances to reach goals. A cognitive task used to study the neuro-behavioral aspects of movement simulation is mental rotation: people mentally re-orient rotated pictures of hands. However, the involvement of the primary motor cortex (M1) in mental rotation is largely controversial.

Differential neural encoding of sensorimotor and visual body representations.

Sensorimotor processing specifically impacts mental body representations. In particular, deteriorated somatosensory input (as after complete spinal cord injury) increases the relative weight of visual aspects of body parts' representations, leading to aberrancies in how images of body parts are mentally manipulated (e.g.

Biomimetic rehabilitation engineering: the importance of somatosensory feedback for brain-machine interfaces.

Objective: Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) re-establish communication channels between the nervous system and an external device. The use of BMI technology has generated significant developments in rehabilitative medicine, promising new ways to restore lost sensory-motor functions. However and despite high-caliber basic research, only a few prototypes have successfully left the laboratory and are currently home-deployed.

Hand-in-hand advances in biomedical engineering and sensorimotor restoration.

Background: Living in a multisensory world entails the continuous sensory processing of environmental information in order to enact appropriate motor routines. The interaction between our body and our brain is the crucial factor for achieving such sensorimotor integration ability. Several clinical conditions dramatically affect the constant body-brain exchange, but the latest developments in biomedical engineering provide promising solutions for overcoming this communication breakdown.

Focal dystonia and the Sensory-Motor Integrative Loop for Enacting (SMILE).

Performing accurate movements requires preparation, execution, and monitoring mechanisms. The first two are coded by the motor system, the latter by the sensory system. To provide an adaptive neural basis to overt behaviors, motor and sensory information has to be properly integrated in a reciprocal feedback loop.

Body context and posture affect mental imagery of hands.

Different visual stimuli have been shown to recruit different mental imagery strategies. However the role of specific visual stimuli properties related to body context and posture in mental imagery is still under debate. Aiming to dissociate the behavioural correlates of mental processing of visual stimuli characterized by different body context, in the present study we investigated whether the mental rotation of stimuli showing either hands as attached to a body (hands-on-body) or not (hands-only), would be based on different mechanisms.