BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Overcoming chronic hemiparesis from a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) can be challenging for many patients, especially after the first 12 months after the CVA. With the use of established motor control theories, the present study investigated electromyogram (EMG)-triggered neuromuscular stimulation and bilateral coordination training. METHODS Twenty-five CVA subjects vol...

In the present event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the neural and temporal dynamics of motor imagery in participants with right-sided hemiparetic cerebral palsy (HCP; n = 10) and in left-handed control participants (n = 10). A mental rotation task was used in which participants were required to judge the laterality of hand pictures. At a behavioral level participants with HCP we...

Contributions to this special issue represent an effective effort toward the understanding of how and to what extent rehabilitation drives neuronal changes, promoting recovery. Table 1 summarizes all these studies. A series of reviews have dealt with the efficacy of trainings aimed at the treatment of motor (Mateo et al.; Pazzaglia and Galli), visual (Sale and Berardi; Dundon et al.), sensory a...

The perception of proprioceptive signals that report the internal state of the body is one of the essential tasks of the nervous system and helps to continuously adapt body movements to changing circumstances. Despite the impact of proprioceptive feedback on motor activity it has rarely been studied in conditions in which motor output and sensory activity interact as they do in behaving animals...

A motor behaviour model simulates movement limits and capabilities of users for different input devices and interaction techniques (MacKenzie, 2003). For ablebodied users, most of the motor-behaviour models are based on Fitts’ Law (Fitts, 1954) and its variations (MacKenzie, 2003). For disabled users, there is growing evidence that their interaction patterns are significantly different from tho...

PURPOSE This article discusses children's development of mature swallowing and feeding as a process of skill acquisition and considers the applicability of motor learning concepts for advancing these capabilities in school-aged children. METHOD The motor learning literature was reviewed, with concentration on (a) concepts that are relevant for the acquisition of skill and (b) structuring prac...

BACKGROUND Ultrasound observation of fetal movement has documented general trends in motor development and fetal age when motor response to stimulation is observed. Evaluation of fetal movement quality, in addition to specific motor activity, may improve documentation of motor development and highlight specific motor responses to stimulation. AIM The aim of this investigation was to assess fe...

Prestin is the motor protein of cochlear outer hair cells. It belongs to a distinct anion transporter family called solute carrier protein 26A, or SLC26A. Members of this family serve two fundamentally distinct functions. Although most members transport different anion substrates across a variety of epithelia, prestin (SLC26A5) is unique, functioning as a voltage-dependent motor protein. Recent...

Transcoding is an important technique for reducing the bit rate or spatial resolution to meet the constrained transmission bandwidths and terminal capabilities. In this paper, we propose a spatial downscaling transcoding method to convert an MPEG-2 bitstream into an H.264/AVC bitstream. A novel feature of the proposed method is to focus on the fast mode decision that fully exploits the advantag...

Traditional transcoding on multimedia has been performed from the perspectives of user terminal capabilities such as display sizes and decoding processing power, and network resources such as available network bandwidth and quality of services (QoS) etc. The adaptation (or transcoding) of multimedia contents to given such constraints has been made by frame dropping and resizing of audiovisual, ...