Engineering Commons^™

Investigating The Combined Effects Of Whole Body Vibration And Vestibular Stimulation On Spasticity And Dystonia In Cerebral Palsy, Peter A. Michael

Dissertations

This study identifies and addresses three voids and potential shortcomings associated with the classification, assessment and management of Cerebral Palsy (CP). These concerns should not undermine the significant advancement that has been made in this specific branch of rehabilitation, but addressing them is necessary. Cerebral Palsy is a group of motor impairments due to hypoxic-ischemic brain damage around the time of birth and very commonly manifests as excessive muscle tone and poor motor control. There are classifications within CP including spasticity and dystonia.

First, a level of discrepancy is present in the classification of CP between the clinical and research …

Development Of A Toolbox For The Kinematic Evaluation Of Hands-Up Video Games, Brooke Marie Odle

Theses

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) often have limited upper extremity (UE) control, Virtual reality (VR) is a current technology being evaluated as a form of UE therapy for children with CP, The systems currently available have been developed with games that cannot be graded to match the skill level of children with severely impaired UE control. A novel video game platform, "Hands-Up", has been developed at New Jersey Institute of Technology. The platform features software that allows for the customization of games and encourages users to make purposeful UE movements. To quantify changes and improvement in movement due to increased …

Voice Onset Time Variation In Stop Consonant To Vowel Transitions, Abhishek Gunvant Parikh

Theses

Reduced duration, increased consistency, and improved intelligibility are goals of reducing the motor complexity of speech for individuals with cerebral palsy having dysarthria. In this study, measurement and analysis were made to compare an individual with spastic Cerebral Palsy (CP) having dysarthria to an individual with athetoid CP having dysarthria as well as to a non-dysarthric individual. Each participant's normal speech, whispering, and speech using an artificial larynx was evaluated, utilizing the source-filter theory methodology. The plausibility of dysarthric speech duration reduction by minimizing vocalization is tested by stop consonant "P,, to vowel transitions. The data suggest that speech duration …