Abstract

Motor disabilities limiting the mobility of limbs affect the quality of lives of people with neural injuries. Among various types of motor disabilities, abnormal intermuscular coordination is commonly observed from people with severe impairment. The concept of muscle synergy, defined as characteristic muscle co-activation patterns activated to produce complex motor behavior, has been applied to assess the alteration in intermuscular coordination in pathological populations. This study presents the development of a robotic system named KAIST upper limb synergy investigation system (KULSIS), for accurate measurement of intermuscular synergies while providing the convenient experimental setup. It provides full force/moment measurements for isometric force generation tasks at various upper limb postures and reaching tasks in a three-dimensional workspace. It is composed of: a three-degree-of-freedom gimbaled handle to adjust the orientation of the handle to accommodate potential hand-wrist deformity, a linear actuator that moves the handle for reaching tasks; a five-degree-of-freedom mechanism for positioning and adjusting the orientation of the linear actuator. The design was evaluated in terms of the workspace of the handle, mechanical stiffness and force/moment measurement accuracy. The position/force measurement is synchronized with electromyographic measurements. Muscle synergy patterns, activated during four isokinetic reaching motions, were also assessed as preliminary data using KULSIS from ten healthy subjects.

Highlights

  • Neurological injuries result in limiting the activities of daily living and the quality of life

  • This study proposes an experimental setup to examine coordination of upper limb muscles, which features a combination of single active DOF and five passive DOFs

  • We developed KAIST upper limb synergy investigation system (KULSIS), a novel experimental setup for intermuscular coordination assessment of the upper extremity

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Summary

Introduction

Neurological injuries result in limiting the activities of daily living and the quality of life. Because of the difference in muscle selection (Steele et al, 2013) and inter-subject variability, it has been challenging to compare the mechanism of how stroke affects intermuscular coordination across diverse UE motor tasks under isometric conditions and in motions. These tendencies in the upper extremity study limit the understanding of the degree to which abnormal intermuscular coordination patterns are generalized across different motor tasks in the upper extremity post-stroke, which is essential to develop novel therapeutic strategies guided by altering the impaired coordination pattern widely used for different motor tasks to become similar to the normal pattern to improve motor function

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