Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Advancing Medical Technology For Motor Impairment Rehabilitation: Tools, Protocols, And Devices, Matthew Yough

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Excellent motor control skills are necessary to live a high-quality life. Activities such as walking, getting dressed, and feeding yourself may seem mundane, but injuries to the neuromuscular system can render these tasks difficult or even impossible to accomplish without assistance. Statistics indicate that well over 100 million people are affected by diseases or injuries, such as stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy, peripheral nerve injury, spinal cord injury, and amputation, that negatively impact their motor abilities. This wide array of injuries presents a challenge to the medical field as optimal treatment paradigms are often difficult to implement due …

Multi-Task Neuromuscular Generalization And Changes Through The Lifespan, Hannah Delaney Carey

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Mobility in everyday life requires executing and shifting between a broad assortment of functional tasks and resisting disturbances that could cause falls. Though the importance of successfully performing a variety of functional tasks is recognized and incorporated in clinical assessments (e.g., the Timed-Up-and-Go Test, Berg Balance Scale), little is understood about the underlying neuromuscular control required, or how it changes with age. The neuromuscular control for functional tasks such as walking is typically studied in isolation, or with variations on the same task. Characterizing the coordination required to produce and shift between a wider variety of tasks and resist external …

A Biomimetic Approach To Controlling Restorative Robotics, Matthew T. Boots

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Movement is the only way a person can interact with the world around them. When trauma to the neuromuscular systems disrupts the control of movement, quality of life suffers. To restore limb functionality, active robotic interventions and/or rehabilitation are required. Unfortunately, the primary obstacle in a person’s recovery is the limited robustness of the human-machine interfaces. Current systems rely on control approaches that rely on the person to learn how the system works instead of the system being more intuitive and working with the person naturally. My research goal is to design intuitive control mechanisms based on biological processes termed …

Muscle Coordination Contributes To Function After Stroke; Proprioception Contributes To Control Of Posture, Movement, Maria Bengtson

Dissertations (1934 -)

More than half of stroke survivors experience persistent upper extremity motor impairments that can negatively impact quality of life and independence. Effective use of the upper extremity requires coordination of agonist/antagonist muscle pairs, as well as coordination of multiple control actions for stabilizing and moving the arm. In this dissertation, I present three studies in which I recorded isometric torque production, single joint movement and stabilization, and clinical measures of function and impairments after stroke to evaluate the extent to which changes in coordination of agonist/antagonist muscles and of sequential control actions contribute to deficits after stroke. In Aim 1, …

Altering A Runner’S Foot Strike Using A Modified Elliptical Trainer, Daniel Shull

Theses and Dissertations

One possible solution to common running related injuries is to transition runners from a rearfoot strike during initial contact to a midfoot strike. Natural rearfoot strike runners were studied to see if a modified elliptical trainer could be used to alter their running pattern to that of a midfoot strike runner. Their results were compared to subjects who ran on a non-modified elliptical trainer. After training on the modified elliptical trainer, subjects demonstrated a decrease in foot angle at initial contact when attempting to run with a midfoot strike. Training did not affect all kinetic metrics or stride frequency. However, …

Multimodal Sensory Integration For Perception And Action In High Functioning Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Nicole Marie Gregor Salowitz

Dissertations (1934 -)

Movement disorders are the earliest observed features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present in infancy. Yet we do not understand the neural basis for impaired goal-directed movements in this population. To reach for an object, it is necessary to perceive the state of the arm and the object using multiple sensory modalities (e.g. vision, proprioception), to integrate those sensations into a motor plan, to execute the plan, and to update the plan based on the sensory consequences of action. In this dissertation, I present three studies in which I recorded hand paths of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) …

Identification And Retraining Of Sensorimotor Deficits To Reduce Intention Tremor In Multiple Sclerosis, Megan Heenan

Dissertations (1934 -)

Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects approximately 1 in 1000 Americans and is a significant cause of disability in the United States. One significant contributor to disability in MS is intention tremor, which manifests as an oscillation about the endpoint of a goal-directed movement. A major challenge of treating intention tremor is that the underlying causes of tremor in MS are unknown. In this study, we describe a systems-level computational model and an experimental technique that parameterizes subject-specific deficits in sensory feedback control during goal-directed movements. We used this approach to characterize sensorimotor control and examine how sensory and motor processes are …

Wavelet Transform Methods For Identifying Onset Of Semg Activity, Janina Wilen

Theses

Quantifying improvements in motor control is predicated on the accurate identification of the onset of surface electromyograpic (sEMG) activity. Applying methods from wavelet theory developed in the past decade to digitized signals, a robust algorithm has been designed for use with sEMG collected during reaching tasks executed with the less-affected arm of stroke patients. The method applied both Discretized Continuous Wavelet Transforms (CWT) and Discrete Wavelet Transforms (DWT) for event detection and no-lag filtering, respectively. Input parameters were extracted from the assessed signals.

The onset times found in the sEMG signals using the wavelet method were compared with physiological instants …