Atypical development of sequential manual motor planning and visuomotor integration in children with autism at early school-age: A longitudinal kinematic study.

Many children with autism struggle with movement difficulties, yet the causes of these difficulties remain unclear. One possible explanation is atypical motor planning and integration of visual and motoric information. Before performing a goal-directed movement, the brain creates a prediction of the movement based on visual and sensory information and previous experience, forming a "blueprint" of the motor steps needed to achieve the goal.

Action execution and observation in autistic adults: A systematic review of fMRI studies.

Motor impairments are common in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) although less is known about the neural mechanisms related to such difficulties. This review provides an outline of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings associated with execution and observation of naturalistic actions in autistic adults. Summarized outcomes revealed that adults with ASD recruit similar brain regions as neurotypical adults during action execution and during action observation, although with a difference in direction and/or magnitude.

Brain activations during execution and observation of visually guided sequential manual movements in autism and in typical development: A study protocol.

Motor issues are frequently observed accompanying core deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Impaired motor behavior has also been linked to cognitive and social abnormalities, and problems with predictive ability have been suggested to play an important, possibly shared, part across all these domains. Brain imaging of sensory-motor behavior is a promising method for characterizing the neurobiological foundation for this proposed key trait.

Effects of a Participative Workplace Intervention on Work Strategies and Expectations of Availability Among Office-Based Employees With Flexible Work Arrangements.

Occupational ApplicationsWork strategies changed following a participatory workplace intervention among office-based employees with flexible work arrangements (FWA). Also, the intervention likely led to clearer rules and routines for FWA within the work group. As FWA increases, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be important to revise work strategies for both the individual and the work group.

Development of Motor Imagery in School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Longitudinal Study.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a diagnosis based on social communication deficits and prevalence of repetitive stereotyped behaviors, but sensorimotor disturbances are commonly exhibited. This longitudinal study aimed at exploring the development of the ability to form mental motor representations (motor imagery; MI) in 14 children with ASD and 17 typically developing (TD) children at 7, 8 and 9 years of age. MI was investigated using a hand laterality paradigm from which response times (RT) and error rates were extracted and compared with performance on a visually based mental rotation task (VI).

Motor planning and movement execution during goal-directed sequential manual movements in 6-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder: A kinematic analysis.

Background: Atypical motor functioning is prevalent in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Knowledge of the underlying kinematic properties of these problems is sparse.

Aims: To investigate characteristics of manual motor planning and performance difficulties/diversity in children with ASD by detailed kinematic measurements.

Direction-Specific Impairments in Cervical Range of Motion in Women with Chronic Neck Pain: Influence of Head Posture and Gravitationally Induced Torque.

Background: Cervical range of motion (ROM) is commonly assessed in clinical practice and research. In a previous study we decomposed active cervical sagittal ROM into contributions from lower and upper levels of the cervical spine and found level- and direction-specific impairments in women with chronic non-specific neck pain. The present study aimed to validate these results and investigate if the specific impairments can be explained by the neutral posture (defining zero flexion/extension) or a movement strategy to avoid large gravitationally induced torques on the cervical spine.

Between- and within-subject variance of motor variability metrics in females performing repetitive upper-extremity precision work.

Kinematic motor variability is extensively studied in occupational, clinical and sports biomechanics, but the consistency of most motor variability metrics have never been reported. In this study, fourteen subjects performed a repetitive pipetting task on three separate days. Movements of hand, arm and pipette tip were recorded in 3D and used to compute shoulder elevation, elbow flexion and shoulder-arm coordination angles, as well as pipette-tip endpoint precision.

Effects of neck coordination exercise on sensorimotor function in chronic neck pain: a randomized controlled trial.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of neck coordination exercise on sensorimotor function in women with neck pain compared with best-available treatment and sham treatment.

Design: Observer-blinded randomized controlled trial with short-term and 6-month follow-ups.

Subjects: Women with chronic non-specific neck pain were randomized to 3 groups: neck coordination exercise with a novel training device; strength training for the neck and shoulders; or massage.

Range of motion in the upper and lower cervical spine in people with chronic neck pain.

Reduced cervical range of motion (ROM) is a common finding in people with neck pain. With few exceptions, only the angle between head and thorax has been measured. Our aim was to use an extended model to compare active cervical flexion and extension, separate for upper and lower cervical levels, between people with chronic non-traumatic neck pain and controls.

Is the P600/SPS affected by the richness of semantic content? A linguistic ERP study in Swedish.

The study investigated whether the P600/SPS component is sensitive to the richness of semantic content in sentences. ERPs were recorded while 30 native Swedish speakers read sentences, of which half were syntactically correct and half contained a syntactic violation. Both kinds of sentences came in one of three types of descending semantic completeness: semantically coherent sentences, sentences which were incoherent due to violations of selectional restrictions, or sentences of pseudo words, hence void of lexical content.