Systematic review of outcome measures of walking training using electromechanical and robotic devices in patients with stroke.

Objective: The aim of this systematic review was to identify appropriate selection criteria of clinical scales for future trials, starting from those most commonly reported in the literature, according to their psychometric properties and International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) domains.

Data Sources: A computerized literature research of articles was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINALH, PubMed, PsychINFO and Scopus databases.

Study Selection: Clinical trials evaluating the effects of electromechanical and robot-assisted gait training trials in stroke survivors.

Corticospinal drive during painful voluntary contractions at constant force output.

In the voluntary contractions, output force can be maintained constant although the inhibitory influences exerted by pain on muscle activity. We investigated changes in the spontaneous and evoked activity of the abductor digiti minimi muscle (ADM) and the biceps brachii muscle (BIC) in healthy volunteers during constant force noxious contraction, resulting from chemically activated nociceptive afferents. EMG-force relationship, motor-evoked response (MEP) to transcranial magnetic stimulation and determinism (DET) of surface EMG signals during constant force contraction was analyzed before, during and after chemically induced tonic activation of their nociceptive afferents.

Influences of chemically-induced muscle pain on power output of ballistic upper limb movements.

Objective: To analyse the conditioning effects of localised acute muscle pain on power output during ipsi- and contra-lateral ballistic arm extensions.

Methods: Eight male subjects performed right arm (ipsilateral) and left arm (contra-lateral) bench press movements. The power output (and force and velocity) of the concentric phase of movement was measured before and during muscle pain induced by a standardised intramuscular injection of levo-ascorbic acid in the right pectoralis major muscle (prime mover muscle) and in the lateral head of the right triceps brachii muscle (synergist).

Early somatosensory processing during tonic muscle pain in humans: relation to loss of proprioception and motor 'defensive' strategies.

Objective: It is known that tonic muscle pain induced by a Levo-Ascorbic (L-AS) solution injected in a foot muscle can transiently modify both regional proprioception and stimulus perception. These findings are paralleled by changes of middle-latency lower-limb somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs). However, little is known on the behaviourally relevant aspect whether eventual SEP pain-induced changes could be partly due to a sort of 'motor strategy' of subjects in the frame of a self-protective reaction towards the noxious stimulus.