Wireless intraoral tongue control of an assistive robotic arm for individuals with tetraplegia.

Background: For an individual with tetraplegia assistive robotic arms provide a potentially invaluable opportunity for rehabilitation. However, there is a lack of available control methods to allow these individuals to fully control the assistive arms.

Methods: Here we show that it is possible for an individual with tetraplegia to use the tongue to fully control all 14 movements of an assistive robotic arm in a three dimensional space using a wireless intraoral control system, thus allowing for numerous activities of daily living.

Do Gender-Specific and High-Resolution Three Dimensional Body Charts Facilitate the Communication of Pain for Women? A Quantitative and Qualitative Study.

Background: Chronic pain is more prevalent among women; however, the majority of standardized pain drawings are often collected using male-like androgynous body representations.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess whether gender-specific and high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) body charts facilitate the communication of pain for women.

Methods: Using mixed-methods and a cross-over design, female patients with chronic pain were asked to provide detailed drawings of their current pain on masculine and feminine two-dimensional (2D) body schemas (N=41, Part I) or on female 2D and 3D high-resolution body schemas (N=41, Part II) on a computer tablet.

Evidence for a central mode of action for etoricoxib (COX-2 inhibitor) in patients with painful knee osteoarthritis.

The COX-2 inhibitor etoricoxib modulates the peripheral and central nociceptive mechanisms in animals. This interaction has not been studied in patients with pain. This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 2-way crossover, 4-week treatment study investigated the pain mechanisms modulated by etoricoxib in patients with painful knee osteoarthritis.

Identifying specific profiles in patients with different degrees of painful knee osteoarthritis based on serological biochemical and mechanistic pain biomarkers: a diagnostic approach based on cluster analysis.

Biochemical and pain biomarkers can be applied to patients with painful osteoarthritis profiles and may provide more details compared with conventional clinical tools. The aim of this study was to identify an optimal combination of biochemical and pain biomarkers for classification of patients with different degrees of knee pain and joint damage. Such profiling may provide new diagnostic and therapeutic options.

Pain catastrophizing and cortical responses in amputees with varying levels of phantom limb pain: a high-density EEG brain-mapping study.

Pain catastrophizing has been associated with phantom limb pain, but so far the cortical processes and the brain regions involved in this relationship have not been investigated. It was therefore tested whether catastrophizing was related to (1) spontaneous pain, (2) somatosensory activity and (3) cortical responses in phantom limb pain patients. The cortical responses were investigated via electroencephalography (EEG) as it has a high temporal resolution which may be ideal for investigating especially the attentional and hypervigilance aspect of catastrophizing to standardized acute stimuli.

Short-term cortical plasticity induced by conditioning pain modulation.

To investigate the effects of homotopic and heterotopic conditioning pain modulation (CPM) on short-term cortical plasticity. Glutamate (tonic pain) or isotonic saline (sham) was injected in the upper trapezius (homotopic) and in the thenar (heterotopic) muscles. Intramuscular electrical stimulation was applied to the trapezius at pain threshold intensities, and somatosensory evoked potentials were recorded with 128 channel EEG.

Cortical responses to the mirror box illusion: a high-resolution EEG study.

The mirror box illusion has proven a helpful therapy in pathologies such as phantom limb pain, and although the effect has been suggested to be a result of the interaction between pain, vision, touch, and proprioception, the mechanisms are still unknown. Multichannel (124) brain responses were investigated in healthy men (N = 11) and women (N = 14) during the mirror box illusion. Tactile somatosensory evoked potentials were recorded from the right thumb during two control conditions and two illusions: (control 1) no mirror: looking at the physical right thumb during stimulation, (control 2) no mirror: looking at the physical left thumb during stimulation, (illusion 1) mirror: the illusion that both thumbs were stimulated, and (illusion 2) mirror: the illusion that none of the thumbs were stimulated.

Gastrointestinal symptoms in type-1 diabetes: is it all about brain plasticity?

Background And Aims: Autonomic neuropathy seems to play a central role in the development of gastrointestinal symptoms in diabetes. In order to explore the neuronal mechanisms behind the symptoms we evaluated the brain processing of painful visceral stimuli.

Methods: Evoked brain potentials were recorded to assess the response to painful oesophageal electrical stimuli in 15 healthy volunteers and 14 type-1 diabetes patients with autonomic neuropathy and related gastrointestinal symptoms.

Central processing of gut pain in diabetic patients with gastrointestinal symptoms.

Objective: To evaluate the brain's responses to painful visceral and somatic stimuli in diabetic patients with gastrointestinal symptoms.

Research Design And Methods: The sensitivity to electrical esophageal and median nerve stimulations was assessed in 15 healthy volunteers and 14 type 1 diabetic patients with autonomic neuropathy and gastrointestinal symptoms using a euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp. Evoked brain potentials were recorded.

Volunteers with high versus low alpha EEG have different pain-EEG relationship: a human experimental study.

The alpha rhythm (7.5-12 Hz) is one of the fundamental features of the human EEG which usually has maximum amplitude over occipital regions. It is well recognized that individuals have highly different magnitudes of alpha EEG.

Automatic determination of synergies by radial basis function artificial neural networks for the control of a neural prosthesis.

This paper describes an automatic method for synthesizing the control for a neural prosthesis (NP) that could augment elbow flexion/extension and forearm pronation/supination in persons with hemiplegia. The basis for the control was a synergistic model of reaching and grasping that uses temporal and spatial synergies between the arm and body segments. The synergies were determined from the movement data measured in nondisabled persons during the performance of functional tasks.