Biomimetic Peripheral Nerve Stimulation Promotes the Rat Hindlimb Motion Modulation in Stepping: An Experimental Analysis.

Peripheral nerve stimulation is an effective neuromodulation method in patients with lower extremity movement disorders caused by stroke, spinal cord injury, or other diseases. However, most current studies on rehabilitation using sciatic nerve stimulation focus solely on ankle motor regulation through stimulation of common peroneal and tibial nerves. Using the electrical nerve stimulation method, we here achieved muscle control via different sciatic nerve branches to facilitate the regulation of lower limb movements during stepping and standing.

Neural Decoding for Intracortical Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Brain-computer interfaces have revolutionized the field of neuroscience by providing a solution for paralyzed patients to control external devices and improve the quality of daily life. To accurately and stably control effectors, it is important for decoders to recognize an individual's motor intention from neural activity either by noninvasive or intracortical neural recording. Intracortical recording is an invasive way of measuring neural electrical activity with high temporal and spatial resolution.

The effects of aerobic exercise combined with resistance training on inflammatory factors and heart rate variability in middle-aged and elderly women with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Objective: This study investigated the effects of aerobic exercise combined with resistance training on serum inflammatory factors and heart rate variability (HRV) in women with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).

Methods: A total of 30 patients with diabetic cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy (DCAN) were randomly divided into a control group (n = 15) and an exercise group (n = 15). The control group was treated with routine hypoglycemic drugs, while the exercise group was treated with routine hypoglycemic drugs + resistance training (AE + RT).

Improving the Robustness of Human-Machine Interactive Control for Myoelectric Prosthetic Hand During Arm Position Changing.

Robust classification of natural hand grasp type based on electromyography (EMG) still has some shortcomings in the practical prosthetic hand control, owing to the influence of dynamic arm position changing during hand actions. This study provided a framework for robust hand grasp type classification during dynamic arm position changes, improving both the "hardware" and "algorithm" components. In the hardware aspect, co-located synchronous EMG and force myography (FMG) signals are adopted as the multi-modal strategy.

Effect of neuromorphic transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (nTENS) of cortical functional networks on tactile perceptions: an event-related electroencephalogram study.

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is generally applied for tactile feedback in the field of prosthetics. The distinct mechanisms of evoked tactile perception between stimulus patterns in conventional TENS (cTENS) and neuromorphic TENS (nTENS) are relatively unknown. This is the first study to investigate the neurobiological effect of nTENS for cortical functional mechanism in evoked tactile perception.

Subjective Well-being of Special Education Teachers in China: The Relation of Social Support and Self-Efficacy.

In order to explore the relationship of social support, self-efficacy, and subjective well-being of special education teachers in China, 496 teachers from 67 special education schools were surveyed by questionnaire. We found that (1) the subjective well-being of special education teachers in China was in the medial level. (2) There were significant differences in subjective well-being level among teachers of different genders, teacher position, education background, and teaching age.

Unexpected Terrain Induced Changes in Cortical Activity in Bipedal-Walking Rats.

Humans and other animals can quickly respond to unexpected terrains during walking, but little is known about the cortical dynamics in this process. To study the impact of unexpected terrains on brain activity, we allowed rats with blocked vision to walk on a treadmill in a bipedal posture and then walk on an uneven area at a random position on the treadmill belt. Whole brain EEG signals and hind limb kinematics of bipedal-walking rats were recorded.

[Variation Characteristics of Ambient Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) Volume Fraction During Hangzhou COVID-19 Period].

A continuous observation campaign was carried out with the Syntech Spectras GC955 volatile organics online monitoring system from December 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020 during the COVID-19 period in Hangzhou. Composition characteristics, diurnal variation, and atmospheric chemical reactivity of VOCs were analyzed. The results showed that (total VOCs) were the highest before the COVID-19 pandemic in different sites and the lowest during the first response period.

Multisite Simultaneous Neural Recording of Motor Pathway in Free-Moving Rats.

Neural interfaces typically focus on one or two sites in the motoneuron system simultaneously due to the limitation of the recording technique, which restricts the scope of observation and discovery of this system. Herein, we built a system with various electrodes capable of recording a large spectrum of electrophysiological signals from the cortex, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and muscles of freely moving animals. The system integrates adjustable microarrays, floating microarrays, and microwires to a commercial connector and cuff electrode on a wireless transmitter.

Spinal Cord Injury-Induced Changes in Encoding and Decoding of Bipedal Walking by Motor Cortical Ensembles.

Recent studies have shown that motor recovery following spinal cord injury (SCI) is task-specific. However, most consequential conclusions about locomotor functional recovery from SCI have been derived from quadrupedal locomotion paradigms. In this study, two monkeys were trained to perform a bipedal walking task, mimicking human walking, before and after T8 spinal cord hemisection.

Neurons in Primary Motor Cortex Encode External Perturbations during an Orientation Reaching Task.

When confronting an abrupt external perturbation force during movement, subjects continuously adjust their behaviors to adapt to changes. Such adaptation is of great importance for realizing flexible motor control in varied environments, but the potential cortical neuronal mechanisms behind it have not yet been elucidated. Aiming to reveal potential neural control system compensation for external disturbances, we applied an external orientation perturbation while monkeys performed an orientation reaching task and simultaneously recorded the neural activity in the primary motor cortex (M1).

Different Modes of Low-Frequency Focused Ultrasound-Mediated Attenuation of Epilepsy Based on the Topological Theory.

Epilepsy is common brain dysfunction, where abnormal synchronized activities can be observed across multiple brain regions. Low-frequency focused pulsed ultrasound has been proven to modulate the epileptic brain network. In this study, we used two modes of low-intensity focused ultrasound (pulsed-wave and continuous-wave) to sonicate the brains of KA-induced epileptic rats, analyzed the EEG functional brain connections to explore their respective effect on the epileptic brain network, and discuss the mechanism of ultrasound neuromodulation.

Reduction in post-spinal cord injury spasticity by combination of peripheral nerve grafting and acidic fibroblast growth factor infusion in monkeys.

Objective: Spasticity is a frequent complication after spinal cord injury (SCI), but the existing therapies provide only limited relief and are associated with adverse reactions. Therefore, we aimed to develop a novel strategy to ameliorate the spasticity induced by SCI.

Methods: This nonrandomized controlled study used a repeated measurement design.

Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound-Mediated Attenuation of Acute Seizure Activity Based on EEG Brain Functional Connectivity.

(1) Background: Ultrasound has been used for noninvasive stimulation and is a promising technique for treating neurological diseases. Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder, that is attributed to uncontrollable abnormal neuronal hyperexcitability. Abnormal synchronized activities can be observed across multiple brain regions during a seizure.

A Multi-DoF Prosthetic Hand Finger Joint Controller for Wearable sEMG Sensors by Nonlinear Autoregressive Exogenous Model.

The loss of mobility function and sensory information from the arm, hand, and fingertips hampers the activities of daily living (ADL) of patients. A modern bionic prosthetic hand can compensate for the lost functions and realize multiple degree of freedom (DoF) movements. However, the commercially available prosthetic hands usually have limited DoFs due to limited sensors and lack of stable classification algorithms.

Association between cortical thickness and distinct vascular cognitive impairment and dementia in patients with white matter lesions.

New Findings: What is the central question of this study? White matter lesions (WMLs) are a brain disease characterized by altered brain structural and functional connectivity, but findings have shown an inconsistent pattern: are there distinct cortical thickness changes in patients with WMLs subtypes? What is the main finding and its importance? Patients with WMLs with non-dementia vascular cognitive impairment and WMLs with vascular dementia showed distinct pathophysiology in cortical thickness. These neural correlates of WMLs should be considered in future treatment.

Abstract: The effect of cortical thickness on white matter lesions (WMLs) in patients with distinct vascular cognitive impairments is relatively unknown.

Rat Locomotion Detection Based on Brain Functional Directed Connectivity from Implanted Electroencephalography Signals.

Previous findings have suggested that the cortex involved in walking control in freely locomotion rats. Moreover, the spectral characteristics of cortical activity showed significant differences in different walking conditions. However, whether brain connectivity presents a significant difference during rats walking under different behavior conditions has yet to be verified.

Electrocortical activity in freely walking rats varies with environmental conditions.

Longstanding theories in the field of neurophysiology have held that walking in rats is an unconscious, rhythmic locomotion that does not require cortical involvement. However, recent studies have suggested that the extent of cortical involvement during walking actually varies depending on the environmental conditions. To determine the impact of environmental conditions on cortical engagement in freely walking rats, we recorded limb kinematics and signals from implanted electroencephalography arrays in rats performing a series of natural behaviors.

Multi-source domain adaptation for decoder calibration of intracortical brain-machine interface.

For nonstationarity of neural recordings, daily retraining is required in the decoder calibration of intracortical brain-machine interfaces (iBMIs). Domain adaptation (DA) has started to be applied in iBMIs to solve the problem of daily retraining by taking advantage of historical data. However, previous DA studies used only a single source domain, which might lead to performance instability.

Feature-Selection-Based Transfer Learning for Intracortical Brain-Machine Interface Decoding.

The time spent in collecting current samples for decoder calibration and the computational burden brought by high-dimensional neural recordings remain two challenging problems in intracortical brain-machine interfaces (iBMIs). Decoder calibration optimization approaches have been proposed, and neuron selection methods have been used to reduce computational burden. However, few methods can solve both problems simultaneously.

Reinforcement Learning Based Fast Self-Recalibrating Decoder for Intracortical Brain-Machine Interface.

Background: For the nonstationarity of neural recordings in intracortical brain-machine interfaces, daily retraining in a supervised manner is always required to maintain the performance of the decoder. This problem can be improved by using a reinforcement learning (RL) based self-recalibrating decoder. However, quickly exploring new knowledge while maintaining a good performance remains a challenge in RL-based decoders.

An Ultra-Sensitive Modular Hybrid EMG-FMG Sensor with Floating Electrodes.

To improve the reliability and safety of myoelectric prosthetic control, many researchers tend to use multi-modal signals. The combination of electromyography (EMG) and forcemyography (FMG) has been proved to be a practical choice. However, an integrative and compact design of this hybrid sensor is lacking.

A Robust Real-Time Detecting and Tracking Framework for Multiple Kinds of Unmarked Object.

A rodent real-time tracking framework is proposed to automatically detect and track multi-objects in real time and output the coordinates of each object, which combines deep learning (YOLO v3: You Only Look Once, v3), the Kalman Filter, improved Hungarian algorithm, and the nine-point position correction algorithm. A model of a Rat-YOLO is trained in our experiment. The Kalman Filter model is established in an acceleration model to predict the position of the rat in the next frame.

Peripheral Neural Interface.

Peripheral nervous system, widely spread in the whole body, is the important bridge for the transmission of neural signals. Signals from the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) are transmitted to different parts of the body by the peripheral nerves, while along the way they also feedback all kinds of sensory information. Certain level of information integration and processing also occurs in the system.