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Full-Text Articles in Rehabilitation and Therapy
Design And Analysis Of A 3d-Printed, Thermoplastic Elastomer (Tpe) Spring Element For Use In Corrective Hand Orthotics, Kevin Thomas Richardson
Design And Analysis Of A 3d-Printed, Thermoplastic Elastomer (Tpe) Spring Element For Use In Corrective Hand Orthotics, Kevin Thomas Richardson
Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering
This thesis proposes an algorithm that determine the geometry of 3D-printed, custom-designed spring element bands made of thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) for use in a wearable orthotic device to aid in the physical therapy of a human hand exhibiting spasticity after stroke. Each finger of the hand is modeled as a mechanical system consisting of a triple-rod pendulum with nonlinear stiffness at each joint and forces applied at the attachment point of each flexor muscle. The system is assumed quasi-static, which leads to a torque balance between the flexor tendons in the hand, joint stiffness and the design force applied to …
Development Of An Eeg Brain-Machine Interface To Aid In Recovery Of Motor Function After Neurological Injury, Elizabeth Salmon
Development Of An Eeg Brain-Machine Interface To Aid In Recovery Of Motor Function After Neurological Injury, Elizabeth Salmon
Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering
Impaired motor function following neurological injury may be overcome through therapies that induce neuroplastic changes in the brain. Therapeutic methods include repetitive exercises that promote use-dependent plasticity (UDP), the benefit of which may be increased by first administering peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) to activate afferent fibers, resulting in increased cortical excitability. We speculate that PNS delivered only in response to attempted movement would induce timing-dependent plasticity (TDP), a mechanism essential to normal motor learning. Here we develop a brain-machine interface (BMI) to detect movement intent and effort in healthy volunteers (n=5) from their electroencephalogram (EEG). This could be used in …