Feasibility of manual teach-and-replay and continuous impedance shaping for robotic locomotor training following spinal cord injury.

Robotic gait training is an emerging technique for retraining walking ability following spinal cord injury (SCI). A key challenge in this training is determining an appropriate stepping trajectory and level of assistance for each patient, since patients have a wide range of sizes and impairment levels. Here, we demonstrate how a lightweight yet powerful robot can record subject-specific, trainer-induced leg trajectories during manually assisted stepping, then immediately replay those trajectories.

Locomotor training using body weight support on a treadmill improves mobility in persons with multiple sclerosis: a pilot study.

Rationale: The purpose of this protocol was to investigate the potential benefits and tolerability of locomotor training using body weight support on a treadmill (LTBWST) in persons with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Methods: Four persons with primarily spinal cord MS and severely impaired ambulation (Expanded Disability Status Scale score 7.0-7.

The human spinal cord interprets velocity-dependent afferent input during stepping.

We studied the motor response to modifying the rate of application of sensory input to the human spinal cord during stepping. We measured the electromyographic (EMG), kinematic and kinetic patterns of the legs during manually assisted or unassisted stepping using body weight support on a treadmill (BWST) in eight individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). At various treadmill speeds (0.

Clonus after human spinal cord injury cannot be attributed solely to recurrent muscle-tendon stretch.

Clonus, presented behaviorally as rhythmic distal joint oscillation, is a common pathology that occurs secondary to spinal cord injury (SCI) and other neurological disabilities. There are two predominant theories as to the underlying mechanism of clonus. The prevailing one is that clonus results from recurrent activation of stretch reflexes.