Key words: swimming, diving, moving in 3 dimensions, mimicking, song, dance, prosody, articulate language, semi-aquatic past. Articulate language depends on very different abilities, such as vocal dexterity, vocal mimicking and the acquirement by children of the very different and arbitrary phonology and grammatical structure of any language. A vast array of experiments confirm that children ac...

BACKGROUND Mental practice (MP) is a cognitive strategy which may improve the acquisition of motor skills and functional performance of athletes and individuals with neurological injuries. OBJECTIVE To determine whether an individualized, specific functional task-oriented MP, when added to conventional physical therapy (PT), promoted better learning of motor skills in daily functions in indiv...

BACKGROUND Animal studies indicate forced exercise (FE) improves overall motor function in Parkinsonian rodents. Global improvements in motor function following voluntary exercise (VE) are not widely reported in human Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to compare the effects of VE and FE on PD symptoms, motor function, and bimanual dexterity. METHODS Ten ...

BACKGROUND After stroke, deregulated interhemispheric interactions influence residual paretic hand function. Anodal or cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can rebalance these abnormal interhemispheric interactions and improve motor function. OBJECTIVE We explored whether dual-hemisphere tDCS (dual-tDCS) in participants with chronic stroke can improve fine hand motor functi...

Soft grippers are receiving growing attention due to their compliance-based interactive safety and dexterity. Hybrid gripper with soft actuators enhanced by rigid constraints is in design. With structural components actuated actuators, they could achieve excellent grasping adaptability payload while also being easy model control conventional kinematics. However, existing works were mostly focus...

BACKGROUND Intermediate cognitive phenotypes (ICPs) are measurable and quantifiable states that may be objectively assessed in a standardized method, and can be integrated into association studies, including genetic, biochemical, clinical, and imaging based correlates. The present study used neuropsychological measures as ICPs, with factor scores in executive functioning, attention, memory, fin...