Measuring spatial navigation during locomotion in children: A systematic review.

Spatial navigation allows us to move around our environment, walking being the most advanced form of human locomotion. Over the years, a range of tools has been developed to study spatial navigation in children. To describe the role of locomotion during the assessment of spatial navigation in children, providing an overview of the instruments available for assessing spatial navigation in typically developing children and those with neurodevelopmental disorders.

Adaptations of the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT) for 2- and 3-year-old preterm and term-born toddlers: A preliminary study.

Introduction: Topographical memory is crucial for navigation and environmental representation. The Walking Corsi Test (WalCT) has been used to evaluate topographical memory in children from 4 years upward. The present study aims to determine whether adapted versions of the WalCT- by simplifying instructions and increasing motivation- can be adopted to test topographical memory in 2- and 3-year-old toddlers born at term and preterm.

Exploring the role of the left DLPFC in fatigue during unresisted rhythmic movements.

Understanding central fatigue during motor activities is important in neuroscience and different medical fields. The central mechanisms of motor fatigue are known in depth for isometric muscle contractions; however, current knowledge about rhythmic movements and central fatigue is rather scarce. In this study, we explored the role of an executive area (left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex [DLPFC]) in fatigue development during rhythmic movement execution, finger tapping (FT) at the maximal rate, and fatigue after effects on the stability of rhythmic patterns.

Effect of stimulation timing on testing voluntary muscle force generation.

Background: The interpolated twitch technique (ITT) is a ubiquitous test for assessing the level of voluntary muscle force generation, in which muscle twitches are evoked via percutaneous electrical stimulation. Traditionally, the stimulation timing during the ITT is not computer-controlled and usually delivered from 5 to 10 s after the maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) of the potentiated muscle.

Methods: In this work, we evaluated the sizes of the evoked twitches in the lower limb with different controlled stimulation time delays with respect to the MVC of the ankle plantar flexors.

Bayesian Methods in the Field of Rehabilitation.

Bayesian techniques, as an alternative method of statistical analysis in rehabilitation studies, have some advantages such as handling small sample sizes, allowing incorporation of previous experience of the researchers or clinicians, being suitable for different kinds of studies, and managing highly complex models. These characteristics are important in rehabilitation research. In the present article, the Bayesian approach is displayed through three examples in previously analyzed data with traditional or frequentist methods.

Bilateral tDCS on Primary Motor Cortex: Effects on Fast Arm Reaching Tasks.

Background: The effects produced by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the motor system have been widely studied in the past, chiefly focused on primary motor cortex (M1) excitability. However, the effects on functional tasks are less well documented.

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the effect of tDCS-M1 on goal-oriented actions (i.

Effects of early or late-evening fatiguing physical activity on sleep quality in non-professional sportsmen.

Background: This study aims to understand whether night sleep-quality is distorted by fatiguing physical activity (PA) when conducted early or late in the evening.

Methods: Nine males (18-38yrs) performed sessions of fatiguing-PA over 3 consecutive days (Mon-Wed), for 2 weeks. One week the PA was performed at 17h, and in the other week at 21h.

Effects of movement imitation training in Parkinson's disease: A virtual reality pilot study.

Background: Hypometria is a clinical motor sign in Parkinson's disease. Its origin likely emerges from basal ganglia dysfunction, leading to an impaired control of inhibitory intracortical motor circuits. Some neurorehabilitation approaches include movement imitation training; besides the effects of motor practice, there might be a benefit due to observation and imitation of un-altered movement patterns.

Spatiotemporal Gait Patterns During Overt and Covert Evaluation in Patients With Parkinson´s Disease and Healthy Subjects: Is There a Hawthorne Effect?

Parkinson's disease (PD) and aging lead to gait impairments. Some of the disturbances of gait are focused on step length, cadence, and temporal variability of gait cycle. Under experimental conditions gait can be overtly evaluated, but patients with PD are prone to expectancy effects; thus it seems relevant to determine if such evaluation truly reflects the spontaneous gait pattern in such patients, and also in healthy subjects.

Balancing the excitability of M1 circuitry during movement observation without overt replication.

Although observation of a movement increases the excitability of the motor system of the observer, it does not induce a motor replica. What is the mechanism for replica suppression? We performed a series of experiments, involving a total of 66 healthy humans, to explore the excitability of different M1 circuits and the spinal cord during observation of simple movements. Several strategies were used.

The effects of expectancy on corticospinal excitability: passively preparing to observe a movement.

The corticospinal tract excitability is modulated when preparing movements. Earlier to movement execution, the excitability of the spinal cord increases waiting for supraspinal commands to release the movement. Movement execution and movement observation share processes within the motor system, although movement observation research has focused on processes later to movement onset.

Motor facilitation during real-time movement imitation in Parkinson's disease: a virtual reality study.

Background: Impaired temporal stability and poor motor unit recruitment are key impairments in Parkinsonian motor control during a whole spectrum of rhythmic movements, from simple finger tapping to gait. Therapies based on imitation can be designed for patients with motor impairments and virtual-reality (VR) offers a new perspective. Motor actions are known to depend upon the dopaminergic system, whose involvement in imitation is unknown.

Validity of the finger tapping test in Parkinson's disease, elderly and young healthy subjects: is there a role for central fatigue?

Objective: The main goal of this work is to evaluate the validity of the finger tapping test (FT) to detect alterations in rhythm formation.

Methods: We use FT to study the alterations in motor rhythm in three different groups: Parkinson's patients, elderly healthy controls, and young healthy control subjects (HY). The test was performed in COMFORT and FAST tapping modes and repeated on two different days.

Antagonist muscle co-activation during straight walking and its relation to kinematics: insight from young, elderly and Parkinson's disease.

Increased antagonist muscle co-activation of the lower limb during walking seems to be an adaptive process to the physiological changes of aging, in order to gain joint stability. In the healthy subjects this view seems to be reinforced by the fact that the co-activation index (CAI) increases when the gait is faster. The few reports on antagonist co-activation in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients indicate that they have larger co-activation than the healthy elderly, supporting the idea of the stabilization role of CAI during gait, as postural instability is a cardinal feature of PD.

Virtual reality as a tool for evaluation of repetitive rhythmic movements in the elderly and Parkinson's disease patients.

This work presents an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) system to evaluate, and potentially treat, the alterations in rhythmic hand movements seen in Parkinson's disease (PD) and the elderly (EC), by comparison with healthy young controls (YC). The system integrates the subjects into a VR environment by means of a Head Mounted Display, such that subjects perceive themselves in a virtual world consisting of a table within a room. In this experiment, subjects are presented in 1(st) person perspective, so that the avatar reproduces finger tapping movements performed by the subjects.

[Chest granuloma secondary to methyl methacrylate. Case report].

We present the case of a patient with a history of a massive left hemithorax crushing injury in 1985; the exact management of the lesion is unknown. Twenty years later he had a thoracic fistula with a culture that was reported as positive for Enteroccocus faecalis and Staphyloccocus epidermidis. The patient was referred by the chest surgery service with the diagnosis of rib osteomyelitis once complementary imaging tests were performed (plain X-rays, CAT scan and MRI).