Objective: The study aimed to explore the perspectives of participating pregnant women and Health Care Professionals (HCPs) towards receiving and providing cytomegalovirus (CMV) education so that barriers and facilitators towards incorporating CMV in routine antenatal care could be better understood.
Design: This process evaluation phase employed a qualitative design using individual, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews.
Setting: Recruitment and interviews took place within a large teaching hospital from an ethnically diverse area of South-west London PARTICIPANTS: The study sample included 20 participants: 15 pregnant women, and five HCPs.
Background: Proprioceptive deficits after stroke are associated with poor upper limb function, slower motor recovery, and decreased self-care ability. Improving proprioception should enhance motor control in stroke survivors, but current evidence is inconclusive. Thus, this study examined whether a robot-aided somatosensory-based training requiring increasingly accurate active wrist movements improves proprioceptive acuity as well as motor performance in chronic stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpasmodic dysphonia (SD) is an incurable focal dystonia of the larynx that impairs speech and communication. Vibro-tactile stimulation (VTS) alters afferent proprioceptive input to sensorimotor cortex that controls speech. This proof-of-concept study examined the effect of laryngeal VTS on speech quality and cortical activity in 13 SD participants who vocalized the vowel /a/ while receiving VTS for 29 minutes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigh vibration transfer from a tennis racquet to the player may cause discomfort, and is hypothesized to influence performance and the onset of muscle fatigue. This study examined a racquet with a novel vibration damping technology (VDT) designed to mitigate frame vibration. Racquet vibration, post-impact vibration transfer to the player, arm electromyographic activity and tennis performance were compared to a non-VDT racquet.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProprioceptive deficits are common among stroke survivors and are associated with slower motor recovery, poorer upper limb motor function, and decreased self-care ability. Somatosensory feedback augmenting proprioception should enhance motor control after stroke, but available evidence is inconclusive. This study evaluated the effects of a robot-aided, somatosensory-focused training on proprioceptive acuity and motor performance in individuals with sub-acute and chronic stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a debilitating voice/speech disorder without an effective cure. To obtain a better understanding of the underlying cortical neural mechanism of the disease we analyzed electroencephalographic (EEG) signals of people with SD during voice production.
Method: Ten SD individuals and 10 healthy volunteers produced 50 vowel vocalization epochs of 2500 ms duration.
Int J Geriatr Psychiatry
February 2019
Objective: The aim of this study was to enhance understanding about homecare workers providing care to people with dementia at end of life by exploring homecare workers' perceptions of challenges and the support they needed and sometimes received.
Methods: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 29 homecare workers and 13 homecare managers in England. Framework analysis was used to analyse the data.
This study mapped the development of proprioception in healthy, typically developing children by objectively measuring forearm position sense acuity. We assessed position sense acuity in a cross-sectional sample of 308 children (5-17 years old; M/F = 127/181) and a reference group of 26 healthy adults (18-25 years old; M/F = 12/14) using a body-scalable bimanual manipulandum that allowed forearm flexion/extension in the horizontal plane. The non-dominant forearm was passively displaced to one of three target positions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Numerous reports advocate that training of the proprioceptive sense is a viable behavioral therapy for improving impaired motor function. However, there is little agreement of what constitutes proprioceptive training and how effective it is. We therefore conducted a comprehensive, systematic review of the available literature in order to provide clarity to the notion of training the proprioceptive system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Constraint-induced therapy (CIT) is effective in improving upper extremity motor function, but evidence is lacking about effectiveness grasp and trunk control.
Objective: This study investigated whether distributed CIT combined with trunk restraint (dCIT + TR) benefited movement kinematics of grasping and the trunk, as well as motor ability of the upper extremity, more than dCIT alone.
Methods: A total of 45 stroke participants received 2 hours of dCIT + TR, dCIT, or the dose-matched control intervention for 3 weeks.