Relación de la mejora de la calidad de vida de los sujetos que practican actividad física con daño cerebral adquirido

RELACIÓN DE LA MEJORA DE LA CALIDAD DE VIDA DE LOS SUJETOS QUE PRACTICAN ACTIVIDAD FÍSICA CON DEÑO CEREBRAL ADQUIRID

Programa AQRDATE aplicado en rehabilitación en actividades de la vida diaria en pacientes con daño cerebral adquirido

Versión electrónica de la ponencia presentada en INTERA 2011: International Technology Robotics Applications Congress, celebrado en Mieres en 2011El proyecto que proponemos consiste en la utilización de un dispositivo móvil que facilite la realización de las Actividades de la Vida Diaria (AVD) en personas que han sufrido un daño cerebral adquirido. Estas dejan de realizarlas con autonomía debido a una alteración en las funciones mentales superiores (atención, funciones ejecutivas,…). Para conseguir la funcionalidad propuesta se combinan etiquetas 2D en las cuales se almacena la información (análisis de tareas de las AVD) con un teléfono móvil. Las tareas que se han seleccionado son: hacer un zumo de naranja, preparar un café con leche, preparar dos tostadas y untarlas con mantequilla y mermelada. Estas se han subdivido en subtareas que se irán mostrando en la pantalla del teléfono móvil de forma secuenciada, lo cual permitirá al usuario acceder a la información. El sistema por lo tanto ofrece al usuario la posibilidad de: planificar, organizar, secuenciar y ejecutar la actividad propuest

Relación entre las pruebas de funcionalidad de la marcha en personas con daño cerebral adquirido en fase subaguda

Objetivo: Analizar el grado de relación entre cuatro pruebas que valoran la funcionalidad de la marcha en sujetos jóvenes con daño cerebral adquirido (DCA) en fase subaguda y conocer el grado de relación entre estas pruebas y la percepción subjetiva de seguridad en actividades de la vida diaria. Metodología: 67 participantes jóvenes con DCA en fase subaguda (43 hombres y 24 mujeres) con una edad media 35,09 años. Se realizó estadística descriptiva de todas las variables demográficas: género, edad, IMC, meses desde que se produjo la lesión y etiología lesional. Para analizar si existe correlación entre las variables se utilizó el coeficiente de Pearson. Resultados: El Timed 10-Meter Walk presenta una correlación muy alta con Timed Up and Go (TUG) (r=093), alta con el 6-Minute Walk Test (r=0,77) y moderada con el Step Test (r=0,56). El 6-Minute Walk Test presenta una correlación alta con el TUG (r=0,82) y una correlación moderada con el Step Test (r=0,69). El Step Test presenta una correlación moderada con el TUG (r= -0,68). The Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC) presenta una correlación moderada con el Timed 10-Meter Walk (r=0,42), TUG (R=0,40), 6-Minute Walk Test (r=0,40) y Step Test (r=0,44). Conclusiones: Las pruebas de funcionalidad de la marcha presentan una correlación significativa entre moderada y muy alta en personas jóvenes con DCA. El ABC presenta una correlación significativa moderada con las cuatro variables de funcionalidad de la marcha analizadas en esta població

Adaptive hybrid robotic system for rehabilitation of reaching movement after a brain injury: a usability study

BACKGROUND: Brain injury survivors often present upper-limb motor impairment affecting the execution of functional activities such as reaching. A currently active research line seeking to maximize upper-limb motor recovery after a brain injury, deals with the combined use of functional electrical stimulation (FES) and mechanical supporting devices, in what has been previously termed hybrid robotic systems. This study evaluates from the technical and clinical perspectives the usability of an integrated hybrid robotic system for the rehabilitation of upper-limb reaching movements after a brain lesion affecting the motor function. METHODS: The presented system is comprised of four main components. The hybrid assistance is given by a passive exoskeleton to support the arm weight against gravity and a functional electrical stimulation device to assist the execution of the reaching task. The feedback error learning (FEL) controller was implemented to adjust the intensity of the electrical stimuli delivered on target muscles according to the performance of the users. This control strategy is based on a proportional-integral-derivative feedback controller and an artificial neural network as the feedforward controller. Two experiments were carried out in this evaluation. First, the technical viability and the performance of the implemented FEL controller was evaluated in healthy subjects (N = 12). Second, a small cohort of patients with a brain injury (N = 4) participated in two experimental session to evaluate the system performance. Also, the overall satisfaction and emotional response of the users after they used the system was assessed. RESULTS: In the experiment with healthy subjects, a significant reduction of the tracking error was found during the execution of reaching movements. In the experiment with patients, a decreasing trend of the error trajectory was found together with an increasing trend in the task performance as the movement was repeated. Brain injury patients expressed a great acceptance in using the system as a rehabilitation tool. CONCLUSIONS: The study demonstrates the technical feasibility of using the hybrid robotic system for reaching rehabilitation. Patients’ reports on the received intervention reveal a great satisfaction and acceptance of the hybrid robotic system

Sports, morality and body. The voices of sportswomen under Franco's dictatorship

The aim of this research is to study sportswomen's perceptions and experiences of women's sport in Francoist Spain (1939-1975). The main objective is to analyse the social, moral and aesthetic elements that are present in the experience of these athletes. This study was carried out with an intentional sample of 24 women from Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Basque Country, Catalonia and Valencia. They were interviewed by a network of researchers from six universities. Outstanding results show the existence of social limitations to start sports practice (particularly in the post-war period); the importance of sport as a character-building aspect; sport's remarkable influence on their body self-concept; and the incidence on sports of the mainstream moral discourse, which created a female model that even affected sports clothing. The main conclusion is that sportswomen in that period were pioneers and had to fight against most of society in order to develop their facet as athletes, as they would not follow the established model

Neural Processing of Short-Term Recurrence in Songbird Vocal Communication

BACKGROUND: Many situations involving animal communication are dominated by recurring, stereotyped signals. How do receivers optimally distinguish between frequently recurring signals and novel ones? Cortical auditory systems are known to be pre-attentively sensitive to short-term delivery statistics of artificial stimuli, but it is unknown if this phenomenon extends to the level of behaviorally relevant delivery patterns, such as those used during communication. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We recorded and analyzed complete auditory scenes of spontaneously communicating zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) pairs over a week-long period, and show that they can produce tens of thousands of short-range contact calls per day. Individual calls recur at time scales (median interval 1.5 s) matching those at which mammalian sensory systems are sensitive to recent stimulus history. Next, we presented to anesthetized birds sequences of frequently recurring calls interspersed with rare ones, and recorded, in parallel, action and local field potential responses in the medio-caudal auditory forebrain at 32 unique sites. Variation in call recurrence rate over natural ranges leads to widespread and significant modulation in strength of neural responses. Such modulation is highly call-specific in secondary auditory areas, but not in the main thalamo-recipient, primary auditory area. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results support the hypothesis that pre-attentive neural sensitivity to short-term stimulus recurrence is involved in the analysis of auditory scenes at the level of delivery patterns of meaningful sounds. This may enable birds to efficiently and automatically distinguish frequently recurring vocalizations from other events in their auditory scene

Literatura y cultura del exilio espaNol de 1939 en Francia

Centro de Informacion y Documentacion Cientifica (CINDOC). C/Joaquin Costa, 22. 28002 Madrid. SPAIN / CINDOC - Centro de Informaciòn y Documentaciòn CientìficaSIGLEESSpai

aQRdate program applied to daily life activities for patients with brain damage

This is an electronic version of the poster presented at the 2nd International AEGIS Conference and Final Workshop held in Brussels (Belgium) on 2011.We want to thank the collaboration of the patients, and their families , who helped on the development of this project. This research has been partially funded by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (ASIES project, TIN2010-17344