Preliminary structural analysis of an active exoskeleton for robotic neuro-rehabilitation

In this paper the exoskeleton P.I.G.R.O. (Pneumatic Interactive Gait Rehabilitation Orthosis), developed in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (DIMEAS) Politecnico di Torino with the important co-operation with doctors, is presented. It was preliminary designed for a completely unloaded walking gait cycle in order to treat the first steps of the neurorehabilitation trainings. An initial FEM evaluation of P.I.G.R.O. structure is here presented. It underlines a lot of important aspects and techniques to analyse the structural characteristics of P.I.G.R.O. legs rigid parts using a commercial software but analysing both the actions of the pneumatic actuators and of the patients muscles and/or movements. The results obtained are good and allow to verify the P.I.G.R.O. legs structure and to establish a procedure to study its characteristics also with the presence of the patien

The anatomical basis of proper name processing. A critical review

A specific role has recently been proposed in proper name processing for, respectively, the right hemisphere, the anterior temporal lobe and the thalamus. None of these claims seems to be fully justified with regard to a review of known relevant single case reports

Cognitive correlates of narrative impairment in moderate traumatic brain injury

Traumaticbraininjuries(TBIs)areoftenassociatedwithcommunicativedeficits. Theincoherentand impoverishedlanguageobservedinnon-aphasicindividualswithsevereTBIhasbeenlinkedtoa problem intheglobalorganizationofinformationatthetextlevel.Thepresentstudyaimedtoanalyze the featuresofnarrativediscourseimpairmentinagroupofadultswithmoderateTBI(modTBI).10non- aphasic speakerswithmodTBIand20neurologicallyintactparticipantswererecruitedforthe experiment.Theircognitive,linguisticandnarrativeskillswerethoroughlyassessed.Thepersonswith modTBI exhibitednormalphonological,lexicalandgrammaticalskills.However,theirnarrativeswere characterizedbylowerlevelsofLexicalInformativenessandmoreerrorsofbothLocalandGlobal Coherence that,attimes,madetheirnarrativesvagueandambiguous.Significant correlationswere found betweenthesenarrativedifficulties andtheproductionofbothperseverativeandnon- perseverativeerrorsontheWCST.Thesedisturbancesconfirm previous findings whichsuggestadeficit at theinterfacebetweencognitiveandlinguisticprocessingratherthanaspecific linguisticdisturbance in thesepatients