It is a general assumption that pneumatic muscle-type actuators will play an important role in the development of an assistive rehabilitation robotics system. In the last decade, the development of a pneumatic muscle actuated lower-limb leg orthosis has been rather slow compared to other types of actuated leg orthoses that use AC motors, DC motors, pneumatic cylinders, linear actuators, series ...

Individuals with chronic stroke have reduced perfusion of the paretic lower limb at rest; however, the hyperemic response to graded muscle contractions in this patient population has not been examined. This study quantified blood flow to the paretic and non-paretic lower limbs of subjects with chronic stroke after submaximal contractions of the knee extensor muscles and correlated those measure...

The Functional Challenge Walking relies on selective timing and intensity of appropriate muscles at each joint to provide weightbearing stability, shock absorption, and progression over the supporting foot during stance and to advance the limb in swing. Energy is conserved by activating only the muscles optimally aligned for each task and by substituting momentum and passive tissue tension for ...

Objectives: The results of a few studies about the effects of ankle brace on muscles function during the performance of different tasks are contradictory. Moreover, the effect of brace on the co-contraction of ankle muscles is undiscovered. Therefore, the present study investigated the effect of brace usage on the ankle muscles activity and co-contraction during single-leg landing. Methods: Fi...

In this prospective descriptive study, all patients with acute lower limb ischemia who presented to Shohada Tajrish Hospital (STH) between July 200 1 and July 2003 were analyzed and followed for 6 months. The total population of 109 patients, with no significant difference in sexual distribution had a mean age of 64± 16 years. 23% had AF and 31 % had a history of MI, 'but in the ECG of 30%,...

People come in different shapes and sizes. In particular, calf muscle size in humans varies considerably. One possible cause for the different shapes of calf muscles is the inherent difference in neural signals sent to these muscles during walking. In sedentary adults, the variability in neural control of the calf muscles was examined with muscle size, walking kinematics and limb morphometrics....

Bi-articular muscles form a subclass of poly-articular muscles. Muscles in human limbs belonging to these classes are enumerated. For some of these muscles experimental evidence had been given that they direct forces on the environment and move segments of the limbs in a unique way. They perform the combination of these effects in cooperation with mono-articular antagonists. Such muscles are si...

Unpredictable forces which perturb balance are frequently applied to the body through interaction between the upper limb and the environment. Lower limb muscles respond rapidly to these postural disturbances in a highly specific manner. We have shown that the muscle activation patterns of lower limb muscles are organized in a direction specific manner which changes with lower limb stability. An...