Dystonia in childhood may be severely disabling and often unremitting and unrecognized. Considered a rare disorder, dystonic symptoms in childhood are pervasive in many conditions including disorders of developmental delay, cerebral palsy (CP), autism, neurometabolic, neuroinflammatory, and neurogenetic disorders. Collectively, there is a need to recognize the role of early postures and movemen...

Low back disorders (LBDs) are the most common and costly occupationally-related compensable conditions facing employers today. Over the years several biomechanical assessment models have been developed that intended to assess the load profile imposed upon the spine during lifting and, thus, intended to facilitate the control of LBD risk in the workplace. Many of these biomechanical models have ...

OBJECTIVE Only a few abdominal muscle exercises have been quantitatively evaluated on both a mat and exercise ball, but the benefits reported for the ball have been equivocally applied to all exercises. The purpose of this study is to evaluate differences in the biological response of muscle activation, lumbar spine posture, and loading variables for extensor exercises performed on 2 surfaces. ...

It is widely known that the pinch-grip forces of the human hand are linearly related to the weight of the grasped object. Less is known about the relationship between grip force and grip stiffness. We set out to determine variations to these dependencies in different tasks with and without visual feedback. In two different settings, subjects were asked to (a) grasp and hold a stiffness-measurin...

When an object is lifted vertically, the normal force increases and decreases in tandem with tangential (load) force to safely avoid slips. For horizontal object transport, horizontal forces at the contact surfaces can be decomposed into manipulation forces (producing acceleration/deceleration) and grasping forces. Although the grasping forces must satisfy equilibrium constraints, it is not cle...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The effectiveness of functional electrical stimulation (FES) has been investigated in chronic hemiplegia. The present study examines whether FES, given during acute stroke, was more effective in promoting motor recovery of the lower extremity and walking ability than standard rehabilitation alone. METHODS Forty-six subjects, 70.9+/-8.0 years old and 9.2+/-4.1 days after...