Electromyography Assessment During Gait in a Robotic Exoskeleton for Acute Stroke

Background: Robotic exoskeleton (RE) based gait training involves repetitive task-oriented movements and weight shifts to promote functional recovery. To effectively understand the neuromuscular alterations occurring due to hemiplegia as well as due to the utilization of RE in acute stroke, there is a need for electromyography (EMG) techniques that not only quantify the intensity of muscle activations but also quantify and compare activation timings in different gait training environments.Purpose: To examine the applicability of a novel EMG analysis technique, Burst Duration Similarity Index (BDSI) during a single session of inpatient gait training in RE and during traditional overground gait training for individuals with acute stroke.Methods: Surface EMG was collected bilaterally with and without the RE device for five participants with acute stroke during the normalized gait cycle to measure lower limb muscle activations. EMG outcomes included integrated EMG (iEMG) calculated from the root-mean-square profiles, and a novel measure, BDSI derived from activation timing comparisons.Results: EMG data demonstrated volitional although varied levels of muscle activations on the affected and unaffected limbs, during gait with and without the RE. During the stance phase mean iEMG of the soleus (p = 0.019) and rectus femoris (RF) (p = 0.017) on the affected side significantly decreased with RE, as compared to without the RE. The differences in mean BDSI scores on the affected side with RE were significantly higher than without RE for the vastus lateralis (VL) (p = 0.010) and RF (p = 0.019).Conclusions: A traditional amplitude analysis (iEMG) and a novel timing analysis (BDSI) techniques were presented to assess the neuromuscular adaptations resulting in lower extremities muscles during RE assisted hemiplegic gait post acute stroke. The RE gait training environment allowed participants with hemiplegia post acute stroke to preserve their volitional neuromuscular activations during gait iEMG and BDSI analyses showed that the neuromuscular changes occurring in the RE environment were characterized by correctly timed amplitude and temporal adaptations. As a result of these adaptations, VL and RF on the affected side closely matched the activation patterns of healthy gait. Preliminary EMG data suggests that the RE provides an effective gait training environment for in acute stroke rehabilitation

Lower extremity robotic exoskeleton devices for overground ambulation recovery in acquired brain injury—A review

Acquired brain injury (ABI) is a leading cause of ambulation deficits in the United States every year. ABI (stroke, traumatic brain injury and cerebral palsy) results in ambulation deficits with residual gait and balance deviations persisting even after 1 year. Current research is focused on evaluating the effect of robotic exoskeleton devices (RD) for overground gait and balance training. In order to understand the device effectiveness on neuroplasticity, it is important to understand RD effectiveness in the context of both downstream (functional, biomechanical and physiological) and upstream (cortical) metrics. The review identifies gaps in research areas and suggests recommendations for future research. We carefully delineate between the preliminary studies and randomized clinical trials in the interpretation of existing evidence. We present a comprehensive review of the clinical and pre-clinical research that evaluated therapeutic effects of RDs using various domains, diagnosis and stage of recovery

Disturbances in Response Inhibition and Emotional Processing as Potential Pathways to Violence in Schizophrenia: A High-Density Event-Related Potential Study

OBJECTIVE: Increased susceptibility to emotional triggers and poor response inhibition are important in the etiology of violence in schizophrenia. Our goal was to evaluate abnormalities in neurophysiological mechanisms underlying response inhibition and emotional processing in violent patients with schizophrenia (VS) and 3 different comparison groups: nonviolent patients (NV), healthy controls (HC) and nonpsychotic violent subjects (NPV). METHODS: We recorded high-density Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and behavioral responses during an Emotional Go/NoGo Task in 35 VS, 24 NV, 28 HC and 31 NPV subjects. We also evaluated psychiatric symptoms and impulsivity. RESULTS: The neural and behavioral deficits in violent patients were most pronounced when they were presented with negative emotional stimuli: They responded more quickly than NV when they made commission errors (ie, failure of inhibition), and evidenced N2 increases and P3 decreases. In contrast, NVs showed little change in reaction time or ERP amplitude with emotional stimuli. These N2 and P3 amplitude changes in VSs showed a strong association with greater impulsivity. Besides these group specific changes, VSs shared deficits with NV, mostly N2 reduction, and with violent nonpsychotic subjects, particularly P3 reduction. CONCLUSION: Negative affective triggers have a strong impact on violent patients with schizophrenia which may have both behavioral and neural manifestations. The resulting activation could interfere with response inhibition. The affective disruption of response inhibition, identified in this study, may index an important pathway to violence in schizophrenia and suggest new modes of treatment

Introduction effort, climate matching and species traits as predictors of global establishment success in non-native reptiles

Non-native reptiles are often detrimental to native communities and ecosystems and can be extremely difficult to manage once established. Thus, there is considerable interest in predicting the likelihood of establishment of nonnative reptiles. We assessed three hypotheses describing possible factors contributing to the successful establishment of introduced reptiles in an effort to better identify potential invaders

Oklahoma's dirty dozen: Unwanted invasive plants

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Reproducible protocols for metagenomic analysis of human faecal phageomes

peer-reviewedAll sequence data used in the analyses were deposited in the Sequence read Archive (SRA) (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra) under BioProject PRJNA407341. Sample IDs, meta data and corresponding accession numbers are summarised in Additional file 2: Table S2. All raw count tables, 16S taxonomic assignments, BLAST top hits for viral contigs and R code used for the analysis are available at (https://figshare.com/s/71163558b4f78e3e7ed6).Background Recent studies have demonstrated that the human gut is populated by complex, highly individual and stable communities of viruses, the majority of which are bacteriophages. While disease-specific alterations in the gut phageome have been observed in IBD, AIDS and acute malnutrition, the human gut phageome remains poorly characterised. One important obstacle in metagenomic studies of the human gut phageome is a high level of discrepancy between results obtained by different research groups. This is often due to the use of different protocols for enriching virus-like particles, nucleic acid purification and sequencing. The goal of the present study is to develop a relatively simple, reproducible and cost-efficient protocol for the extraction of viral nucleic acids from human faecal samples, suitable for high-throughput studies. We also analyse the effect of certain potential confounding factors, such as storage conditions, repeated freeze-thaw cycles, and operator bias on the resultant phageome profile. Additionally, spiking of faecal samples with an exogenous phage standard was employed to quantitatively analyse phageomes following metagenomic sequencing. Comparative analysis of phageome profiles to bacteriome profiles was also performed following 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Results Faecal phageome profiles exhibit an overall greater individual specificity when compared to bacteriome profiles. The phageome and bacteriome both exhibited moderate change when stored at + 4 °C or room temperature. Phageome profiles were less impacted by multiple freeze-thaw cycles than bacteriome profiles, but there was a greater chance for operator effect in phageome processing. The successful spiking of faecal samples with exogenous bacteriophage demonstrated large variations in the total viral load between individual samples. Conclusions The faecal phageome sequencing protocol developed in this study provides a valuable additional view of the human gut microbiota that is complementary to 16S amplicon sequencing and/or metagenomic sequencing of total faecal DNA. The protocol was optimised for several confounding factors that are encountered while processing faecal samples, to reduce discrepancies observed within and between research groups studying the human gut phageome. Rapid storage, limited freeze-thaw cycling and spiking of faecal samples with an exogenous phage standard are recommended for optimum results

GateFinder: projection-based gating strategy optimization for flow and mass cytometry

Motivation: High-parameter single-cell technologies can reveal novel cell populations of interest, but studying or validating these populations using lower-parameter methods remains challenging.Results: Here, we present GateFinder, an algorithm that enriches high-dimensional cell types with simple, stepwise polygon gates requiring only two markers at a time. A series of case studies of complex cell types illustrates how simplified enrichment strategies can enable more efficient assays, reveal novel biomarkers and clarify underlying biology

Can Healthcare Assistant Training (CHAT) improve the relational care of older people? Study protocol for a pilot cluster-randomised controlled trial

Background People aged 75 years and over account for one in four of all hospital admissions. There has been increasing recognition of problems in the care of older people, particularly in hospitals. Evidence suggests that older people judge the care they receive in terms of kindness, empathy, compassion, respectful communication and being seen as a person not just a patient. These are aspects of care to which we refer when we use the term 'relational care'. Healthcare assistants deliver an increasing proportion of direct care to older people, yet their training needs are often overlooked. Methods/design This study will determine the acceptability and feasibility of a cluster randomised controlled trial of 'Older People's Shoes' a two-day training intervention for healthcare assistants caring for older people in hospital. Within this pilot, two-arm, parallel, cluster randomised controlled trial, healthcare assistants within acute hospital wards are randomised to either the two-day training intervention or training as usual. Registered nurses deliver 'Older People's Shoes' over two days, approximately one week apart. It contains three components: experiential learning about ageing, exploration of older people's stories, and customer care. Outcomes will be measured at the level of patient (experience of emotional care and quality of life during their hospital stay), healthcare assistant (empathy and attitudes towards older people), and ward (quality of staff/patient interaction). Semi-structured interviews of a purposive sample of healthcare assistants receiving the intervention, and all trainers delivering the intervention, will be undertaken to gain insights into the experiences of both the intervention and the trial, and its perceived impact on practice. Trial registration The study was registered as an International Standard Randomised Contolled Trial (ISRCTN10385799) on 29 December 2014

Wbp2 is required for normal glutamatergic synapses in the cochlea and is crucial for hearing

WBP2 encodes the WW domain-binding protein 2 that acts as a transcriptional coactivator for estrogen receptor a (ESR1) and progesterone receptor (PGR). We reported that the loss of Wbp2 expression leads to progressive high-frequency hearing loss in mouse, as well as in two deaf children, each carrying two different variants in the WBP2 gene. The earliest abnormality we detect in Wbp2-deficient mice is a primary defect at inner hair cell afferent synapses. This study defines a new gene involved in the molecular pathway linking hearing impairment to hormonal signalling and provides new therapeutic targets