OBJECTIVES This study examined the relationship between awareness of disability and occupational performance in a group of elderly persons during the year after stroke. METHOD Data on awareness of disability and occupational performance (i.e., activities of daily living [ADL] motor and process ability) were collected 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after stroke. A mixed-linear-effects model was implem...

BACKGROUND The functional declines with aging relate to deficits in motor control and strength. In this study, we determine whether older adults exhibit impaired driving as a consequence of declines in motor control or strength. METHODS Young and older adults performed the following tasks: (i) maximum voluntary contractions of ankle dorsiflexion and plantarflexion; (ii) sinusoidal tracking wi...

OBJECTIVE To further examine the psychometric properties of a 9-item version of the Arm Motor Ability Test (AMAT-9) in persons with stroke. SUBJECTS Thirty-two community-dwelling persons > 6 months post-stroke undergoing robotics treatment (mean age = 56.0 years, time post-stroke = 4.1 years, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score = 4.1, and AMAT-9 score = 1.22). METHODS Construct...

Over the last two decades, the number of studies on motor imagery in children has witnessed a large expansion. Most studies used the hand laterality judgment paradigm or the mental chronometry paradigm to examine motor imagery ability. The main objective of the current review is to collate these studies to provide a more comprehensive insight in children's motor imagery development and its age ...

The purpose of this study was to analyse gender-specific differences in elementary motor speed ability. The reliability of 7 tests with 15 items was investigated using intra-classcoefficients. Gender-specific differences of performance were analysed using independent samples t-tests. There were no differences between men and women in elementary motor speed. The structure of the elementary motor...

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most prevalent neurologic disease in children and a leading cause of severe physical disability. Research and clinical experience indicate that children with CP have abnormal neuromuscular junctions (NMJs), and we present evidence that nonapposition of neuromuscular junction components is associated with the severity of motor system deficit in CP. Leg muscle biopsies ...

The inability to vocally match a pitch can be caused by poor pitch perception or by poor vocal-motor control. Although previous studies have tried to examine the relationship between pitch perception and vocal production, they have failed to control for the timbre of the target to be matched. In the present study, we compare pitch-matching accuracy with an unfamiliar instrument (the slider) and...

BACKGROUND The Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) has become an important tool to describe motor function in children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). The Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) was developed recently as a corresponding classification of manual ability. The aim of this study was to describe the association between gross motor function and manual ability in a total ...

The structural integrity of the corticospinal tract (CST) after stroke is closely linked to the degree of motor impairment. Simple and reliable methods of assessing white matter integrity within the CST would facilitate the use of this measure in routine clinical practice. Commonly, diffusion tensor imaging is used to measure voxel-wise fractional anisotropy (FA) in a variety of regions of inte...