Publications by authors named "Filer W"

Neural signals in residual muscles of amputated limbs are frequently decoded to control powered prostheses. Yet myoelectric controllers assume muscle activities of residual muscles are similar to that of intact muscles. This study sought to understand potential changes to motor unit (MU) properties after limb amputation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There has been controversy about the value of offline evaluation of EMG-based neural-machine interfaces (NMIs) for their real-time application. Often, conclusions have been drawn after studying the correlation of the offline EMG decoding accuracy/error with the NMI user's real-time task performance without further considering other important human performance metrics such as adaptation rate, cognitive load, and physical effort. To fill this gap, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between the offline decoding accuracy of EMG-based NMIs and user adaptation, cognitive load, and physical effort in real-time NMI use.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There has been a debate on the most appropriate way to evaluate electromyography (EMG)-based neural-machine interfaces (NMIs). Accordingly, this study examined whether a relationship between offline kinematic predictive accuracy (R2) and user real-time task performance while using the interface could be identified. A virtual posture-matching task was developed to evaluate motion capture-based control and myoelectric control with artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained to low (R ≈ 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although advanced wearable robots can assist human wearers, their internal faults (i.e., sensors or control errors) also pose a challenge.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Lumbar paraspinal muscles are heavily involved in daily and work-related activities including trunk bending, trunk twisting, and lifting. Repetitive or inappropriate activation of the lumbar muscles while performing these activities can lead to low back pain. The aim of this preliminary study was to quantify the activation patterns of multiple lumbar muscles when participants performed three different trunk movement tasks, including sustained lumbar flexion posture, dynamic lumbar flexion and extension, and left-right twisting movements.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The scratch collapse test (SCT) is a clinical examination maneuver that has been previously reported as a reliable and reproducible test to diagnose carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The initial study by Cheng et al in 2008 showed a simple test with high sensitivity. However, subsequent attempts to reproduce those findings have resulted in lower accuracy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Simultaneous and proportional control (SPC) of neural-machine interfaces uses magnitudes of smoothed electromyograms (EMG) as control inputs. Though surface EMG (sEMG) electrodes are common for clinical neural-machine interfaces, intramuscular EMG (iEMG) electrodes may be indicated in some circumstances (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This commentary discusses traumatic brain injury (TBI) related to falls among elderly individuals, as well as common TBI sequelae and their treatment. It also discusses the current understanding of TBI-related dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Transdermal delivery of estrogen is an alternative to the oral route in patients receiving hormone replacement therapy for the prevention of osteoporosis. Both transdermal and oral regimens have been shown to be effective. They can be prescribed as either cyclical or continuous regimens.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF