Voluntary Body Movements Research Articles

Insights and perspectives on the enigmatic alary muscles of arthropods.

Three types of muscles, cardiac, smooth and skeletal muscles are classically distinguished in eubilaterian animals. The skeletal, striated muscles are innervated multinucleated syncytia, which, together with bones and tendons, carry out voluntary and reflex body movements. Alary muscles (AMs) are another type of striated syncytial muscles, which connect the exoskeleton to the heart in adult arthropods and were proposed to control hemolymph flux. Developmental studies in Drosophila showed that larval AMs are specified in embryos under control of conserved myogenic transcription factors and interact with excretory, respiratory and hematopoietic tissues in addition to the heart. They also revealed the existence of thoracic AMs (TARMs) connecting to specific gut regions. Their asymmetric attachment sites, deformation properties in crawling larvae and ablation-induced phenotypes, suggest that AMs and TARMs could play both architectural and signalling functions. During metamorphosis, and heart remodelling, some AMs trans-differentiate into another type of muscles. Remaining critical questions include the enigmatic modes and roles of AM innervation, mechanical properties of AMs and TARMS and their evolutionary origin. The purpose of this review is to consolidate facts and hypotheses surrounding AMs/TARMs and underscore the need for further detailed investigation into these atypical muscles.

Relationship between Optimisim and Resilience and Level of Physical Activity among General Population of Aurangabad: A Cross-sectional Study

Background: Physical activity is a voluntary body movement which requires energy expenditure. Optimism makes an individual more resilient so if adversity strikes and the person has an upbeat attitude towards life, it is likely that an individual may bounce back stronger as before. The capacity to change or adjust to various situations may or may not depend on the level of physical activity and optimism in one’s life. The current study is aimed to determine the relationship between physical activity, optimism and resilience among general population of Aurangabad.
 Methods: This cross sectional study had a total of 531 respondents from across the city, out of which 228 were willing to participate. It included individuals from a age group of 18-52 years, of varying occupation.
 Outcome Measures: Three scales were used specifically. Life Orientation Test (LOT) was used to measure optimism. Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) was used to evaluate resilience and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) was used to measure the physical activity among the individuals.
 Results: The results were calculated using statistical tests. Chi-square test was used to find association between physical activity and optimism. The results showed a positive correlation between physical activity and optimism with a p value of > 0.05. The relation between optimism and resilience was calculated using Pearson’s correlation coefficient.
 Conclusion: The study signifies a strong positive correlation between optimism, resilience and physical activity among general population of Aurangabad. The study also concludes a positive correlation between optimism and resilience.

Organização temporal da fala em três condições neurológicas relacionadas aos núcleos da base

ABSTRACT Basal ganglia participate in neural networks that control voluntary body movements, including speech. Diseases that affect the function of these structures can generate abnormal hypokinetic or hyperkinetic movements, influencing speech motor control. How does prosodic temporal organization vary in dysarthria due to Parkinson’s disease (PD), Huntington’s disease (HD), and Sydenham’s chorea (SC)? Three clinical groups (PD with and without medication, HD, and SC) of 15 participants and a control group (n = 18) read a text aloud. Speech fluency measures were related to syntactic boundaries within the text. There was no correlation between global motor scales and temporal parameters of speech. There were correlations between syntactic limits and the duration of pauses in all groups. Only the HD results differed from the other clinical and control groups. Clinical groups are slower to produce speech but preserve the syntactic function of prosody at different levels. Basal nuclei dysfunction appears to affect all clinical groups, regardless of etiology.

Automatic Inter-Frame Patient Motion Correction for Dynamic Cardiac PET Using Deep Learning

Patient motion during dynamic PET imaging can induce errors in myocardial blood flow (MBF) estimation. Motion correction for dynamic cardiac PET is challenging because the rapid tracer kinetics of 82Rb leads to substantial tracer distribution change across different dynamic frames over time, which can cause difficulties for image registration-based motion correction, particularly for early dynamic frames. In this paper, we developed an automatic deep learning-based motion correction (DeepMC) method for dynamic cardiac PET. In this study we focused on the detection and correction of inter-frame rigid translational motion caused by voluntary body movement and pattern change of respiratory motion. A bidirectional-3D LSTM network was developed to fully utilize both local and nonlocal temporal information in the 4D dynamic image data for motion detection. The network was trained and evaluated over motion-free patient scans with simulated motion so that the motion ground-truths are available, where one million samples based on 65 patient scans were used in training, and 600 samples based on 20 patient scans were used in evaluation. The proposed method was also evaluated using additional 10 patient datasets with real motion. We demonstrated that the proposed DeepMC obtained superior performance compared to conventional registration-based methods and other convolutional neural networks (CNN), in terms of motion estimation and MBF quantification accuracy. Once trained, DeepMC is much faster than the registration-based methods and can be easily integrated into the clinical workflow. In the future work, additional investigation is needed to evaluate this approach in a clinical context with realistic patient motion.

HiPSC-Derived Schwann Cells Influence Myogenic Differentiation in Neuromuscular Cocultures.

Motoneurons, skeletal muscle fibers, and Schwann cells form synapses, termed neuromuscular junctions (NMJs). These control voluntary body movement and are affected in numerous neuromuscular diseases. Therefore, a variety of NMJ in vitro models have been explored to enable mechanistic and pharmacological studies. So far, selective integration of Schwann cells in these models has been hampered, due to technical limitations. Here we present robust protocols for derivation of Schwann cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) and their coculture with hiPSC-derived motoneurons and C2C12 muscle cells. Upon differentiation with tuned BMP signaling, Schwann cells expressed marker proteins, S100b, Gap43, vimentin, and myelin protein zero. Furthermore, they displayed typical spindle-shaped morphologies with long processes, which often aligned with motoneuron axons. Inclusion of Schwann cells in coculture experiments with hiPSC-derived motoneurons and C2C12 myoblasts enhanced myotube growth and affected size and number of acetylcholine receptor plaques on myotubes. Altogether, these data argue for the availability of a consistent differentiation protocol for Schwann cells and their amenability for functional integration into neuromuscular in vitro models, fostering future studies of neuromuscular mechanisms and disease.

Walking enhances peripheral visual processing in humans.

Cognitive processes are almost exclusively investigated under highly controlled settings during which voluntary body movements are suppressed. However, recent animal work suggests differences in sensory processing between movement states by showing drastically changed neural responses in early visual areas between locomotion and stillness. Does locomotion also modulate visual cortical activity in humans, and what are the perceptual consequences? Our study shows that walking increased the contrast-dependent influence of peripheral visual input on central visual input. This increase is prevalent in stimulus-locked electroencephalogram (EEG) responses (steady-state visual evoked potential [SSVEP]) alongside perceptual performance. Ongoing alpha oscillations (approximately 10 Hz) further positively correlated with the walking-induced changes of SSVEP amplitude, indicating the involvement of an altered inhibitory process during walking. The results predicted that walking leads to an increased processing of peripheral visual input. A second study indeed showed an increased contrast sensitivity for peripheral compared to central stimuli when subjects were walking. Our work shows complementary neurophysiological and behavioural evidence corroborating animal findings that walking leads to a change in early visual neuronal activity in humans. That neuronal modulation due to walking is indeed linked to specific perceptual changes extends the existing animal work.

Voluntary body movement improves perceptual sensitivity to temporal disparity between movement-related somatosensory and auditory events

Voluntary body movement improves perceptual sensitivity to temporal disparity between movement-related somatosensory and auditory events

Auditory-Somatosensory Temporal Sensitivity Improves When the Somatosensory Event Is Caused by Voluntary Body Movement.

When we actively interact with the environment, it is crucial that we perceive a precise temporal relationship between our own actions and sensory effects to guide our body movements. Thus, we hypothesized that voluntary movements improve perceptual sensitivity to the temporal disparity between auditory and movement-related somatosensory events compared to when they are delivered passively to sensory receptors. In the voluntary condition, participants voluntarily tapped a button, and a noise burst was presented at various onset asynchronies relative to the button press. The participants made either “sound-first” or “touch-first” responses. We found that the performance of temporal order judgment (TOJ) in the voluntary condition (as indexed by the just noticeable difference (JND)) was significantly better (M = 42.5 ms ± 3.8 SEM) than that when their finger was passively stimulated (passive condition: M = 66.8 ms ± 6.3 SEM). We further examined whether the performance improvement with voluntary action can be attributed to the prediction of the timing of the stimulation from sensory cues (sensory-based prediction), kinesthetic cues contained in voluntary action, and/or to the prediction of stimulation timing from the efference copy of the motor command (motor-based prediction). When three noise bursts were presented before the target burst with regular intervals (predictable condition) and when the participant’s finger was moved passively to press the button (involuntary condition), the TOJ performance was not improved from that in the passive condition. These results suggest that the improvement in sensitivity to temporal disparity between somatosensory and auditory events caused by the voluntary action cannot be attributed to sensory-based prediction and kinesthetic cues. Rather, the prediction from the efference copy of the motor command would be crucial for improving the temporal sensitivity.

Dimension proprioceptive et tactile de la conscience corporelle et action volontaire chez un enfant avec TSA : protocole à cas unique en rééducation psychomotrice

Bodily self-consciousness is based mainly on multisensory integration of physical stimuli, as well as sense of body ownership and sense of agency. It seems that voluntary action is an essential source for the development of the bodily self, to build a global and coherent body consciousness. We wanted to test the hypothesis that setting voluntary body movements would consolidate proprioceptive and tactile aspect of altered body awareness in an individual with autism spectrum disorder. It appears that autism is a disorder in which the body experience is impaired. Psychomotor therapy was then proposed to P., 11 years old with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and who seems to show an alteration of body consciousness, with a single case A-B-A-B experimental design. The protocol includes three types of measures: a measure of tactile discrimination, a measure of the kinesthesia of both upper limbs and a measure of kinesthetic acuity of upper limbs, proposed at the beginning of each session. We performed 3 sets of measurements without intervention to establish the baseline and then 10 therapy sessions based on setting voluntary body movements by the subject. We then analyzed the results in graphic form for the visual analysis of the curves. The results and clinical observations seem to point in the direction of a confirmation of the hypothesis; psychomotor therapy sessions around setting voluntary body movements would consolidate fragile bodily self-consciousness in children with ASD.

A regularised EEG informed Kalman filtering algorithm

Abstract The conventional Kalman filter assumes a constant process noise covariance according to the system's dynamics. However, in practice, the dynamics might alter and the initial model for the process noise may not be adequate to adapt to abrupt dynamics of the system. In this paper, we provide a novel informed Kalman filter (IKF) which is informed by an extrinsic data channel carrying information about the system's future state. Thus, each state can be represented with a corresponding process noise covariance, i.e. the Kalman gain is automatically adjusted according to the detected state. As a real-world application, we demonstrate for the first time how the analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) can be used to predict the voluntary body movement and inform the tracking Kalman algorithm about a possible state transition. Furthermore, we provide a rigorous analysis to establish a relationship between the Kalman performance and the detection accuracy. Simulations on both synthetic and real-world data support our analysis.

Effect of dual tasking on postural responses to rapid lower limb movement while seated on an exercise ball

Postural adjustments are used by the central nervous system to pre-empt and correct perturbations in balance during voluntary body movements. Alteration in these responses is associated with a number of neuromuscular/musculoskeletal conditions. Attention has been identified as important in this system; performing a concurrent cognitive task has been suggested to reduce the efficacy of this postural control. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of concurrent cognitive tasking on anticipatory postural adjustments while sitting on an exercise ball with a view to help inform future rehabilitation programmes.Bilateral EMG activity was recorded from the external and internal obliques, rectus abdominis, erector spinae and the right rectus femoris of 20 healthy subjects (9 males) with mean (SD) age of 21.88 (0.86) years (range 21–24 years). A rapid hip flexion protocol was carried out under three conditions: no concurrent task, counting out loud up from one and completing a serial sevens task.The addition of the cognitive task delayed and reduced the EMG in the prime mover muscle but had little impact on the responses of the trunk muscles within the time frame of the anticipatory responses; suggestive of a decoupling of voluntary and postural control mechanisms.The results of this study suggest that perhaps the clinical effects of dual task may not be largely due to changes in anticipatory postural adjustments. However, it would be important to compare these results to those seen in older and functionally impaired individuals as this would be more representative of the typical population undertaking such rehabilitation programmes.

Intravenous contrast-enhanced sonography in children and adolescents - a single center experience.

Compared to adult patients, ultrasonography in children and adolescents is much more common, due to lack of ionizing radiation, and its wide availability. With the introduction of contrast-media for use in ultrasonography, one major drawback of the method could be overcome. In Europe, SonoVue® is the only widely available agent, which due to improved stability makes it possible to image normal and diseased tissue perfusion and vascularization with high accuracy. Inability to hold the breath and voluntary body movement of the patient is less of an obstacle compared to color Doppler techniques and makes the method very attractive for use in children, which, depending on age, may not be very cooperative. Use of intravenous contrast-medium in minors is currently very limited for several reasons: availability, lack of recommendation in national and international guidelines, and lack of official licensing. The article will touch medical indications, technique, safety considerations, and perspective of intravenous use of contrast-media in children and adolescents, including data from a 6-year period in 37 patients.PurposeThe purpose of the study was to collect data on ultrasonographic examinations, expanded by intravenous administration of the contrast agent SonoVue® in children and adolescents. Besides assessing diagnostic yield, data on adverse medication effects was collected.Materials and methodsThe study includes contrast-enhanced ultrasound examinations in 37 children at a single institution. Indications for the examinations were tumor lesions, infections, traumatic organ injuries, and parenchymal organ ischemia. Parents of the patients and adolescent patients were informed about the off-label use of the contrast agent. Thirty-nine examinations were performed, the average age of the patient was 11.1 years (range 1 to 17 years).ResultsAll of the examinations yielded additional diagnostic value, always expanding results from B mode and color coded sonography. Overall, most examinations were done to assess the liver (n=16), followed by the kidney in 10 cases. The different etiologies were encountered in the following order: tumor (n=22), infection (n=9), trauma (n=5), ischemia (n=4). Most examinations were performed to evaluate a hepatic lesion (n=12). There was one incident recorded that fit the criteria of a possible adverse effect. In an 8-year-old girl nausea was noted, that started 15 minutes after the end of the examination and resolved spontaneously. In none of the patients medical treatment for adverse effects was necessary.ConclusionUltrasonography in children, enhanced by intravenous use of contrast medium is feasible and allows for further evaluating cystic and solid tumors, and organ perfusion. Given that proper medical equipment and correct ultrasound machine settings are used, it is a robust method without diagnostic failures. In this small-sized case series there were no severe adverse effects, however, off-label use in children needs to be addressed.

Effects of Long-Term Adaptation to Sway-Yoked Visual Motion and Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation on Visual and Vestibular Control of Posture

Human postural control is a multimodal process involving visual and vestibular information. The aim of the present study was to measure individual differences in the contributions of vision and vestibular senses to postural control, and to investigate if the individual weights could be modulated by long-term adaptation to visual motion or galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS). Since GVS is a less expensive technique than a motion platform and can be wearable, it is a promising virtual reality (VR) technology. We measured the postural sway of observers induced by a visual motion or GVS before and after a 7-day adaptation task. We divided participants into four groups. In visual adaptation groups, visual motions were presented to either enhance voluntary body movement (enhancing vision group) or inhibit voluntary body movement (inhibiting vision group). In GVS adaptation groups, GVS was applied to enhance voluntary body movement (enhancing GVS group) or inhibit voluntary body movement (inhibiting GVS group). The adaptation to enhancing body-movement-yoked visual motion decreased the GVS-induced postural sway at a low motion frequency. The adaptation to the enhancing GVS slightly increased the GVS-induced postural sway and decreased the visually-induced sway at a low motion frequency. The adaptation to the inhibiting GVS increased the GVS-induced postural sway and decreased the visually-induced sway at a high motion frequency. These data suggest that long-term adaptation can modify weights of vision and vestibular senses to control posture. These findings can be applied to training or rehabilitation systems of postural control and also to adaptive virtual-reality systems.

The Nightingale Prize 2010 for best MBEC paper in 2009 awarded

The Nightingale Prize 2010 for best MBEC paper in 2009 awarded

A method for paraplegic upper-body posture estimation during standing: a pilot study for rehabilitation purposes

This paper presents a contribution for restoring standing in paraplegia while using functional electrical stimulation (FES). Movement generation induced by FES remains mostly open looped and stimulus intensities are tuned empirically. To design an efficient closed-loop control, a preliminary study has been carried out to investigate the relationship between body posture and voluntary upper body movements. A methodology is proposed to estimate body posture in the sagittal plane using force measurements exerted on supporting handles during standing. This is done by setting up constraints related to the geometric equations of a two-dimensional closed chain model and the hand-handle interactions. All measured quantities are subject to an uncertainty assumed unknown but bounded. The set membership estimation problem is solved via interval analysis. Guaranteed uncertainty bounds are computed for the estimated postures. In order to test the feasibility of our methodology, experiments were carried out with complete spinal cord injured patients.

Generation and Emergence of Motor Command Pattern for Voluntary Body Movement

Generation and Emergence of Motor Command Pattern for Voluntary Body Movement

The functional relationship between yawning and vigilance

Background Although yawning is a ubiquitous and phylogenetically old phenomenon, its origin and purpose remain unclear. The study aimed at testing the widely held hypothesis that yawning is triggered by drowsiness and brings about a reversal or suspension of the process of falling asleep. Methods Subjects complaining of excessive sleepiness were spontaneously yawning while trying to stay awake in a quiet and darkened room. Changes in their electroencephalogram (EEG) and heart rate variability (HRV) associated with yawning were compared to changes associated with isolated voluntary body movements. Special care was taken to remove eye blink- and movement-artefacts from the recorded signals. Results Yawns were preceded and followed by a significantly greater delta activity in EEG than movements ( p ≤ 0.008). After yawning, alpha rhythms were attenuated, decelerated, and shifted towards central brain regions ( p ≤ 0.01), whereas after movements, they were attenuated and accelerated ( p < 0.02). A significant transient increase of HRV occurred after the onset of yawning and movements, which was followed by a significant slow decrease peaking 17 s after onset ( p < 0.0001). No difference in HRV changes was found between yawns and movements. Conclusions Yawning occurred during periods with increased drowsiness and sleep pressure, but was not followed by a measurable increase of the arousal level of the brain. It was neither triggered nor followed by a specific autonomic activation. Our results therefore confirm that yawns occur due to sleepiness, but do not provide evidence for an arousing effect of yawning.

Therapeutic exercise in physiotherapy practice is beneficial: a summary of systematic reviews 2002–2005

Is therapeutic exercise of benefit? A summary of systematic reviews on therapeutic exercise published from 2002 to September 2005. People with neurological, musculoskeletal, cardiopulmonary, and other conditions who would be expected to consult a physiotherapist. Therapeutic exercise was defined as the prescription of a physical activity program that involves the client undertaking voluntary muscle contraction and/or body movement with the aim of relieving symptoms, improving function or improving, retaining or slowing deterioration of health. Effect of therapeutic exercise in terms of impairment, activity limitations, or participation restriction. The search yielded 38 systematic reviews of reasonable or good quality. The results provided high level evidence that therapeutic exercise was beneficial for patients across broad areas of physiotherapy practice, including people with conditions such as multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis of the knee, chronic low back pain, coronary heart disease, chronic heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Therapeutic exercise was more likely to be effective if it was relatively intense and there were indications that more targeted and individualised exercise programs might be more beneficial than standardised programs. There were few adverse events reported. However, in many areas of practice there was no evidence that one type of exercise was more beneficial than another. Therapeutic exercise was beneficial for patients across broad areas of physiotherapy practice. Further high quality research is required to determine the effectiveness of therapeutic exercise in emerging areas of practice.

The effect of drywall lifting method on workers' balance in a laboratory-based simulation

Voluntary body movement can import a perturbation to the postural stability/balance of a human body. Heavy manual material handling such as drywall lifting may increase this perturbation. The objective of this laboratory-based study was to quantify workers' postural stability while lifting drywall sheets through kinetic and kinematic analyses, and to identify the drywall lifting methods that caused the least perturbation on workers' balance. Sixty male construction workers participated in this study. A simulated drywall-lifting workstation was built and all subjects performed one of the four randomly assigned lifting methods. Kinetic and kinematic measurements were synchronized and collected using a piezoelectric force platform and a five-camera motion analysis system. Both center-of-pressure (COP) and center-of-mass (COM) data were analyzed to assess workers' postural stability. Univariate analyses and principal component analyses (PCA) were used to analyze 13 COP-based and 21 COM-based variables. Results from the univariate analyses and PCA significantly indicated that the three horizontal lifting methods created less perturbation than the vertical lifting method. Based on the results of this study and prior studies, it is concluded that horizontal lifting with both hands on top of the drywall appears to be the best work practice to reduce manual drywall handling hazards associated with fall potential and overexertion injuries.

Cardiovascular responses of semi-arboreal snakes to chronic, intermittent hypergravity.

Cardiovascular functions were studied in semi-arboreal rat snakes (Elaphe obsoleta) following long-term, intermittent exposure to +1.5 Gz (head-to-tail acceleration) on a centrifuge. Snakes were held in a nearly straight position within horizontal plastic tubes during periods of centrifugation. Centrifugal acceleration, therefore, subjected snakes to a linear force gradient with the maximal force being experienced at the tail. Compared to non-centrifuged controls, Gz-acclimated snakes showed greater increases of heart rate during head-up tilt or acceleration, greater sensitivity of arterial pressure to circulating catecholamines, higher blood levels of corticosterone, and higher blood ratios of prostaglandin F 2 alpha/prostaglandin E2. Cardiovascular tolerance to increased gravity during graded Gz acceleration was measured as the maximum (caudal) acceleration force at which carotid arterial blood flow became null. When such tolerances were adjusted for effects of body size and other continuous variables incorporated into an analysis of covariance, the difference between the adjusted mean values of control and acclimated snakes (2.37 and 2.84 Gz, respectively) corresponded closely to the 0.5 G difference between the acclimation G (1.5) and Earth gravity (1.0). As in other vertebrates, cardiovascular tolerance to Gz stress tended to be increased by acclimation, short body length, high arterial pressure, and comparatively large blood volume. Voluntary body movements were important for promoting carotid blood flow at the higher levels of Gz stress.