Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual \"filling in,\" visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.

A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness-Authors' Response-Acting out our sensory experience

Thank you very much for downloading biomechanics and motor control of human movement. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search hundreds times for their favorite books like this biomechanics and motor control of human movement, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some malicious virus inside their laptop.

Biomechanics And Motor Control Of Human Movement

The complete title of this book runs ‘Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics using R’ and as such it very well reflects the purpose and spirit of the book. The author guides the reader in about 350 pages from descriptive and basic statistical methods over classification and clustering to (generalised) linear and mixed models. Each of the methods is introduced in the context of concrete linguistic problems and demonstrated on exciting datasets from current research in the language sciences. In line with its practical orientation, the book focuses primarily on using the methods and interpreting the results. This implies that the mathematical treatment of the techniques is held at a minimum if not absent from the book. In return, the reader is provided with very detailed explanations on how to conduct the analyses using R [1]. The first chapter sets the tone being a 20-page introduction to R. For this and all subsequent chapters, the R code is intertwined with the chapter text and the datasets and functions used are conveniently packaged in the languageR package that is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). With this approach, the author has done an excellent job in enabling researchers and students alike to reproduce the analyses and learn by doing. Another quality as a textbook is the fact that every chapter ends with Workbook sections where the user is invited to exercise his or her analysis skills on supplemental datasets. Full solutions including code, results and comments are given in Appendix A (30 pages). Instructors are therefore very well served by this text, although they might want to balance the book with some more mathematical treatment depending on the target audience. After the introductory chapter on R, the book opens on graphical data exploration. Chapter 3 treats probability distributions and common sampling distributions. Under basic statistical methods (Chapter 4), distribution tests and tests on means and variances are covered. Chapter 5 deals with clustering and classification. Strangely enough, the clustering section has material on PCA, factor analysis, correspondence analysis and includes only one subsection on clustering, devoted notably to hierarchical partitioning methods. The classification part deals with decision trees, discriminant analysis and support vector machines. The regression chapter (Chapter 6) treats linear models, generalised linear models, piecewise linear models and a substantial section on models for lexical richness. The final chapter on mixed models is particularly interesting as it is one of the few text book accounts that introduce the reader to using the (innovative) lme4 package of Douglas Bates which implements linear mixed-effects models. Moreover, the case studies included in this

Analyzing linguistic data: a practical introduction to statistics using R

Evidence-based guidelines on the therapeutic use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

The design and use of materials in the nanoscale size range for addressing medical and health-related issues continues to receive increasing interest. Research in nanomedicine spans a multitude of areas, including drug delivery, vaccine development, antibacterial, diagnosis and imaging tools, wearable devices, implants, high-throughput screening platforms, etc. using biological, nonbiological, biomimetic, or hybrid materials. Many of these developments are starting to be translated into viable clinical products. Here, we provide an overview of recent developments in nanomedicine and highlight the current challenges and upcoming opportunities for the field and translation to the clinic.

/pdf/diverse-applications-of-nanomedicine-2vhw6mihkp.pdf

Diverse Applications of Nanomedicine

Handwriting is an important component of academic curricula and grapho-motor skills (GMS) support learning, reading, memory and self-confidence. Teachers and clinicians report increase in children experiencing problems with acquiring fluid and legible handwriting. To date gold-standard tests evaluating children's GMS, mostly rely on pen and paper tests, requiring extensive coding time and subject to high inter-rater variability. This work presents preliminary data on a new digital platform for Grapho-motor Handwriting Evaluation & Exercise (GHEE), attempting to overcome limitations of available digitalized methods for GMS evalution. In fact, contrary to previous systems, GHEE design originated from comparisons among multiple standardized tests and was based on a human-machine interaction approach. GHEE hardware and software is presented as well as data on preliminary testing. Cursive handwriting data from six adult volunteers was analyzed according to six parameters of relevance, both automatically (i.e., using GHEE software) and manually (i.e., by a human coder). Comparisons among machine and human data sets allowed parsing out parameters to be extracted automatically and parameters requiring human-machine interaction. Results confirmed platform efficacy and feasibility of the proposed approach.

Evaluating Handwriting Skills through Human-Machine Interaction: A New Digitalized System for Parameters Extraction

Over the last decades epidural analgesia has gathered research interest and broad clinical acceptance. In this procedure, the detection of the epidural space is pivotal to avoid major complications. Although, some systems for supporting the anaesthetist in the epidural space detection are commercially available, this difficult procedure is often performed without any support. In previous articles, our research group described a new approach for a non-invasive detection of the epidural space; the assessment of the system was also performed both on a spinal column simulator and in ex vivo animal model (small pig). The mentioned system is based on a Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) that monitors the load exerted by the anaesthesiologist on the syringe plunger during the procedure. The resistance of the sensor is transduced into a voltage by means of a Wheatstone bridge (WB), then it is amplified, finally it is collected by a remote laptop. When the needle reaches the epidural space, the load applied by the anaesthesiologist decreases, so the consequent change of the system output may be used for the detection of the entrance within this space. The previous version of the system communicates to the laptop via USB. In this article, we described a new version of the system which communicates to the laptop via wireless. This solution aims at facilitating the use of the system in clinical settings. After the description of the measuring system, its preliminary assessment in patients undergoing epidural puncture will be reported.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1026/1/012010/pdf

Design and fabrication of a non-invasive, wireless system for monitoring needle insertion during epidural puncture

In this work we describe a new sensing technique to study auditory preferences in young children based on the interaction between perception and action. Manipulation is assessed thanks to a novel device instrumented with a magneto-inertial sensing core. This system allows estimating the manipulation in terms of angular displacements with errors lower than Io. The laboratory validation is presented and discussed in details. Moreover, a pilot trial on two children aged 34 and 35 months is reported to evaluate the appropriateness of the technology to the experimental aims. Preliminary results foster the application of this method to investigate music preferences in young listeners.

The sound of actions: A new tool to study music perception in young children

Tele-operational tasks often suffer from instability issues and limited reliability during unpredictable interactions. We propose a real-time control law reproducing the impedance and kinematic behaviour of a subject's arm (shoulder and elbow) on a remote avatar in a 2-DoF task. The human arm impedance and kinematics are estimated respectively from EMG and M-IMU data and then mapped into the avatar arm through an impedance control. Contrary to literature methods, our portable tele-impedance controller relies only on wearable sensors and enables an easy use in unstructured environments. The good performance (R2> 0.7) of the muscle model used to map on the robot the human stiffness of five healthy subjects indicates the possibility of applying the proposed algorithm for a tele-impedance control.

Tele-Impedance Control Approach Using Wearable Sensors

Estimating the joint impedance in humans is crucial for better understanding human motor control and assessing neuromuscular diseases. The static passive component of the impedance, i.e. passive stiffness, is particularly relevant for the evaluation of neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s Disease. In this paper we focus on the estimation of passive wrist stiffness, which is commonly done by moving the subject’s wrist through hand interfaces- manually or with robotic devices. However, handles employed so far often use not ergonomic designs or may request subjects to grasp the handle, causing muscle contraction which, in turn, affects wrist stiffness. We designed, 3D-printed and evaluated three different designs for ergonomic hand interfaces (H1, H2, H3) to passively move the hand while avoiding grasping or undesired muscle contraction. Performing features were evaluated on four healthy volunteers, during passive wrist manipulation performed by three different experimenters, in terms of: i) relative motion between actual hand movements and movements imposed by the experimenters; ii) activation of wrist muscles in the forearm; iii) subjects’ perceived comfort. All three devices showed good performance in terms of comfort, minimization of muscular activity and relative motion, which on average was around 0.010 m for the relative translations and $8.5 \deg$ for the relative rotations. However, H2 and H3 showed slightly higher performance compared to H1 in terms of lower relative motion, while H2 was also rated as the most comfortable.

Domenico Formica

Papers

Evaluating Handwriting Skills through Human-Machine Interaction: A New Digitalized System for Parameters Extraction

Design and fabrication of a non-invasive, wireless system for monitoring needle insertion during epidural puncture

The sound of actions: A new tool to study music perception in young children

Tele-Impedance Control Approach Using Wearable Sensors

Design and validation of 3D printed hand interfaces for wrist stiffness assessment