Publications related to Balance (ability)

Investigating the neuromechanical control of healthy gait modulation and pathological gaits observed in cerebral palsy using neuromuscular simulations

Locomotion is based on a sophisticated interaction among the environment, the musculoskeletal system, the spinal cord, and the brain locomotor areas. Quality of life is strongly related to the proper capability of this movement. However, many pathologies, ...

EPFL2023

Simulating the progression of brain structural alterations in Parkinson's disease

Chang-Hyun Park

Considering brain structural alterations as neurodegenerative consequences of Parkinson's disease (PD), we sought to infer the progression of PD via the ordering of brain structural alterations from cross-sectional MRI observations. Having measured cortica ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Biomechanical Measures for Fall Risk Assessment and Fall Detection in People with Transfemoral Amputations for the Next-Generation Prostheses: A Scoping Review

Silvestro Micera

Introduction: Transfemoral amputations are known to compromise balance control capabilities, thus increasing the probability of falling. Current research in robotic prostheses is exploring novel strategies to assess the risk of fall and, if required, enabl ...

LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS2022

Comparison of Laboratory and Daily-Life Gait Speed Assessment during ON and OFF States in Parkinson’s Disease

Kamiar Aminian, Arash Atrsaei

Accurate assessment of Parkinson’s disease (PD) ON and OFF states in the usual environment is essential for tailoring optimal treatments. Wearables facilitate measurements of gait in novel and unsupervised environments; however, differences between unsuper ...

2021

Combining Optogenetic Stimulation and Motor Training Improves Functional Recovery and Perilesional Cortical Activity

Silvestro Micera, Maria Pasquini, Francesco Saverio Pavone

Background. An ischemic stroke is followed by the remapping of motor representation and extensive changes in cortical excitability involving both hemispheres. Although stimulation of the ipsilesional motor cortex, especially when paired with motor training ...

SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC2021

Postural Control and Consciousness and Their Applications to Lower-Limb Exoskeletons

Jemina Fasola

Human postural control requires high coordination and is distributed over the whole musculoskeletal and nervous systems. Hence, postural balance can be impaired due to various pathologies. Efficient rehabilitation programs and technological solutions are t ...

EPFL2020

Uncontrolled manifold analysis of the effects of a perturbation-based training on the organization of leg joint variance in cerebellar ataxia

Silvestro Micera

Walking patterns of persons affected by cerebellar ataxia (CA) are characterized by wide stride-to-stride variability ascribable to: the background pathology-related sensory-motor noise; the motor redundancy, i.e., an excess of elemental degrees of freedom ...

SPRINGER2021

Exploring the Contribution of Proprioceptive Reflexes to Balance Control in Perturbed Standing

Auke Ijspeert, Anne Daniëlle Koelewijn

Humans control balance using different feedback loops involving the vestibular system, the visual system, and proprioception. In this article, we focus on proprioception and explore the contribution of reflexes based on force and length feedback to standin ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2020

Comparison of gait characteristics between clinical and daily life settings in children with cerebral palsy

Kamiar Aminian, Anisoara Ionescu, Lena Carcreff, Stéphane Armand

Gait assessments in standardized settings, as part of the clinical follow-up of children with cerebral palsy (CP), may not represent gait in daily life. This study aimed at comparing gait characteristics in laboratory and real life settings on the basis of ...

Nature Research2020

Gait analysis in children with cerebral palsy: bridging the gap between the laboratory and real life

Lena Carcreff

Like 17 million people worldwide, an individual with cerebral palsy (CP) does not have the opportunity to walk harmoniously in society due to long-life impairments in movement and posture. The natural course of CP can be modulated by treatments and therapi ...

EPFL2020

Neuromuscular Controller Embedded in a Powered Ankle Exoskeleton: Effects on Gait, Clinical Features and Subjective Perspective of Incomplete Spinal Cord Injured Subjects

Auke Ijspeert, Florin Dzeladini

Powered exoskeletons are among the emerging technologies claiming to assist functional ambulation. The potential to adapt robotic assistance based on specific motor abilities of incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI) subjects, is crucial to optimize Human-Ro ...

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC2020

Error Augmentation Improves Visuomotor Adaptation during a Full-Body Balance Task

Olaf Blanke, Hannes Bleuler, Mohamed Bouri, Oliver Alan Kannape, Jemina Fasola

Visual amplification of kinematic errors has successfully been applied to improve performance for upper limb movements. In this study, we investigated whether visual error augmentation can promote faster adaptation during a full-body balance task. Healthy ...

IEEE2019

Effects of repeated waist-pull perturbations on gait stability in subjects with cerebellar ataxia

Silvestro Micera

Background: Damage to the cerebellum can affect neural structures involved in locomotion, causing gait and balance disorders. However, the integrity of cerebellum does not seem to be critical in managing sudden and unexpected environmental changes such as ...

BioMed Central2019

The Adapted Lifestyle-Integrated Functional Exercise Program for Preventing Functional Decline in Young Seniors: Development and Initial Evaluation

Wei Zhang

Background: The Lifestyle-integrated Functional Exercise (LiFE) program is an intervention integrating balance and strength activities into daily life, effective at reducing falls in at-risk people >= 70 years. There is potential for LiFE to be adapted to ...

KARGER2019

From standing balance to walking: A single control structure for a continuum of gaits

Auke Ijspeert, Salman Faraji, Seyed Hamed Razavi

This article presents a control algorithm framework with which a bipedal robot can perform a variety of gaits by only modifying a small set of control parameters. The controller drives a number of variables, called non-emergent variables, to their desired ...

2019

Balance Control Strategies during Standing in a Locked-Ankle Passive Exoskeleton

Hannes Bleuler, Mohamed Bouri, Jemina Fasola, Tristan Hubert Vouga, Romain Pierre François Baud

This paper investigates sensorimotor adaptation strategies of sagittal postural control in healthy subjects under kinematic constraints. A passive exoskeleton named CAPTUR, with locked ankle joints and legs motion restrained to the sagittal plane is used t ...

IEEE2019

Non-invasive, Brain-controlled Functional Electrical Stimulation for Locomotion Rehabilitation in Individuals with Paraplegia

Mohamed Bouri, Solaiman Shokur, Miguel Nicolelis

Spinal cord injury (SCI) impairs the flow of sensory and motor signals between the brain and the areas of the body located below the lesion level. Here, we describe a neurorehabilitation setup combining several approaches that were shown to have a positive ...

Nature Research2019

Preliminary Study: Effects of Visual Distortion on Standing Balance Motion Amplitude and Visual Dependency on an Unstable Surface

Olaf Blanke, Hannes Bleuler, Mohamed Bouri, Jemina Fasola

Visual feedback is a common method to enhance motor learning and is widely used in rehabilitation institutes. Although balance training with visual feedback has shown positive results, the most effective way to provide the feedback is still open to researc ...

2018

Optimal visuo-vestibular integration for self-motion perception in patients with unilateral vestibular loss

Olaf Blanke, Mariia Kaliuzhna, Steven Gale

Unilateral vestibular loss (UVL) is accompanied by deficits in processing of visual and vestibular self-motion cues. The present study examined whether multisensory integration of these two types of information is, nevertheless, intact in such patients. Pa ...

2018

Feed-Forward based Control in a DC-DC Converter of Asymmetric Multistage Stacked Boost Architecture

Alfred Rufer, Gina Kristin Steinke, Georgios Mademlis

A new feed-forward control technique for a DC-DC step-up converter based on the asymmetric Multistage Stacked Boost Architecture (MSBA) is proposed. The devel-oped feed-forward controller directly handles the load current and the perturbations that may be ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2017