Multi-segmental postural control patterns in down syndrome.

Background: Patients with Down Syndrome (DS) exhibit less efficient and unstable standing postural control. The specificities of somatosensorial deficits might result in a different utilization of resources and in distinct whole-body kinematic patterns, to date still unexplored. In this paper we aim at addressing multi-segmental coordination patterns in people with DS while maintaining standing balance under different visual conditions (open and closed eyes).

Sustained fatigue assessment during isometric exercises with time-domain near infrared spectroscopy and surface electromyography signals.

The effect of sustained fatigue during an upper limb isometric exercise is presented to investigate a group of healthy subjects with simultaneous time-domain (TD) NIRS and surface electromyography (sEMG) recordings on the deltoid lateralis muscle. The aim of the work was to understand which TD-NIRS parameters can be used as descriptors for sustained muscular fatigue, focusing on the slow phase of this process and using median frequency (MF) computed from sEMG as gold standard measure. It was found that oxygen saturation and deoxy-hemoglobin are slightly better descriptors of sustained fatigue, than oxy-hemoglobin, since they showed a higher correlation with MF, while total-hemoglobin correlation with MF was lower.