Biomechanics Commons^™

Encoding Of Saltatory Tactile Velocity In The Adult Orofacial Somatosensory System, Rebecca Custead

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Processing dynamic tactile inputs is a key function of somatosensory systems. Spatial velocity encoding mechanisms by the nervous system are important for skilled movement production and may play a role in recovery of motor function following neurological insult. Little is known about tactile velocity encoding in trigeminal networks associated with mechanosensory inputs to the face, or the consequences of movement.

High resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the neural substrates of velocity encoding in the human orofacial somatosensory system during unilateral saltatory pneumotactile inputs to perioral hairy skin in 20 healthy adults. A custom multichannel, scalable …

Investigation Of Neural Mechanisms Of Grip Relaxation, Binal Motawar

Theses and Dissertations

Neural mechanisms for grip relaxation are relatively unknown and understudied, as compared to mechanisms for grip initiation. Yet, termination of motor activity is as important as initiation in daily function. This knowledge gap presents incomplete understanding of neural control of hand function and its impairment with aging and neurologic disorders. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and examine neural mechanisms of grip relaxation in healthy young adults, with aging, and in chronic stroke survivors. A series of experiments in healthy young adults showed that the relaxation from a maximum power grip was mediated by increase in the short-interval …

Foot Kinematics And Neuromuscular Preactivation In Habitual Forefoot And Rearfoot Runners, Rhiannon Seneli

Theses and Dissertations

As the rate of running related injuries has failed to decline despite advances in footwear, many researchers have begun focusing on different foot strike patterns possible contribution to injury risk. While many studies have focused on the differences between RFS and FFS running, few have investigated kinematic differences within the distal foot in habitual RFS and FFS runners and have failed to consider mechanical and neuromuscular changes due to fatigue. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate foot kinematics and neuromuscular differences between RFS and FFS runners at the beginning and end of an exhaustive run. Fifteen habitual …

Hpcnmf: A High-Performance Toolbox For Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, Karthik Devarajan, Guoli Wang

COBRA Preprint Series

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is a widely used machine learning algorithm for dimension reduction of large-scale data. It has found successful applications in a variety of fields such as computational biology, neuroscience, natural language processing, information retrieval, image processing and speech recognition. In bioinformatics, for example, it has been used to extract patterns and profiles from genomic and text-mining data as well as in protein sequence and structure analysis. While the scientific performance of NMF is very promising in dealing with high dimensional data sets and complex data structures, its computational cost is high and sometimes could be critical for …

The Effects Of Manipulated Somatosensory Input On Simulated Falls During Walking, Sarah Mitchell-Ewart

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Previous research has demonstrated that there is a distinct relationship between aging and instability. The somatosensory system plays a significant role in balance control in conjunction with vision and the vestibular system (Qiu et al., 2012). Evidence has shown that manipulation of the mechanoreceptors on the plantar surface of the foot has a direct effect on balance control. By manipulating these receptors with hypothermic anesthesia and vibration, researchers are capable of simulating the effect of sensory modification on healthy individuals, in order to understand the role that plantar-surface sensation has in adapting to perturbation during gait (Perry et al., 2001; …