In some occupations it is hard to protect the hands against the severe weather conditions in wintertime due to the requirement to maintain manual dexterity. Decrease in temperature of the hands increases risk of cold injury and deteriorates muscle function and manual dexterity, which in turn decreases productivity. A series of field and lab studies were performed to investigate cold stress and ...

NARRATIVE REVIEW: This article is a narrative review of the psychometric properties (reliability and validity) and other characteristics (cost, time to administer, and year of publication) of commercially available manual and finger dexterity assessments used for adults in the United States. Complete research articles related to dexterity assessments were gathered from online database searches ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of a short-term dexterity-training program on muscle tremor and the performance of hand precision tasks in patients with essential tremor (ET). DESIGN Three testing sessions: baseline, after 4 weeks without any interventions (control), and after 4 weeks of dexterity-training carried out 3 times per week. SETTING Biomechanics research laboratory. PARTICIPAN...

OBJECTIVE The present study aimed to compare a range of cooling methods possibly utilised by occupational workers, focusing on their effect on body temperature, perception and manual dexterity. METHODS Ten male participants completed eight trials involving 30 min of seated rest followed by 30 min of cooling or control of no cooling (CON) (34°C, 58% relative humidity). The cooling methods util...

BACKGROUND Intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) is a repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) protocol that influences cortical excitability and motor function recovery. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to investigate the effects of iTBS on manual dexterity and hand motor imagery in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. METHODS Thirty-six MS patients were non-randomly assigned into...

BACKGROUND Mood disorders are associated with various neurocognitive deficits. However, few studies have reported the impairment of motor dexterity in unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. In the present study, manual dexterity was compared between unipolar major depression, bipolar disorder, and healthy controls. METHODS Manual dexterity was assessed by the Purdue pegboard test in 98 pat...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of two different treatment interventions, neurodevelopmental treatment (NDT) and practicing of specific functional activity, on improving the gross manual dexterity of the affected upper extremity in spastic hemiparetic cerebral palsied children. Thirty children with spastic hemiparetic cerebral palsy (CP) participated in the study, rangin...

BACKGROUND Although cell therapy is a promising approach after cerebral cortex lesion, few studies assess quantitatively its behavioral gain in nonhuman primates. Furthermore, implantations of fetal grafts of exogenous stem cells are limited by safety and ethical issues. OBJECTIVE To test in nonhuman primates the transplantation of autologous adult neural progenitor cortical cells with assess...