A textbook of physiology

Effects of general and local fatigue on postural control: A review

Provided herein are skin-mounted biomedical devices and methods of making and using biomedical devices for sensing and actuation applications. For example, flexible and/or stretchable biomedical devices are provided, including electronic devices useful for establishing conformal contact with the skin of a subject. Devices disclosed herein can comprise a plurality of sensing and/or actuating devices provided as part of a skin-mounted flexible or stretchable electronic circuit.

Flexible and Stretchable Electronic Systems for Epidermal Electronics

Age-related differences in attentional cost associated with postural dual tasks: increased recruitment of generic cognitive resources in older adults.

We describe the use of semiconductor nanomaterials, advanced fabrication methods and unusual device designs for a class of electronics capable of integration onto the inner and outer surfaces of thin, elastomeric sheets in closed-tube geometries, specially formed for mounting on the fingertips. Multifunctional systems of this type allow electrotactile stimulation with electrode arrays multiplexed using silicon nanomembrane (Si NM) diodes, high-sensitivity strain monitoring with Si NM gauges, and tactile sensing with elastomeric capacitors. Analytical calculations and finite element modeling of the mechanics quantitatively capture the key behaviors during fabrication/assembly, mounting and use. The results provide design guidelines that highlight the importance of the NM geometry in achieving the required mechanical properties. This type of technology could be used in applications ranging from human‐machine interfaces to ‘instrumented’ surgical gloves and many others.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0957-4484/23/34/344004/pdf

Silicon nanomembranes for fingertip electronics

Several changes in the human sensory systems, like presbycusis or presbyopia, are well-known to occur with physiological ageing. A similar change is likely to occur in proprioception, too, but there are strong and unexplained discrepancies in the literature. It was proposed that assessment of the attentional cost of proprioceptive control could provide information able to unify these previous studies. To this aim, 15 young adults and 15 older adults performed a position matching task in single and dual-task paradigms with different difficulty levels of the secondary task (congruent and incongruent Stroop-type tasks) to assess presumed age-related deficits in proprioceptive control. Results showed that proprioceptive control was as accurate and as consistent in older as in young adults for a single proprioceptive task. However, performing a secondary cognitive task and increasing the difficulty of this secondary task evidenced both a decreased matching performance and/or an increased attentional cost of proprioceptive control in older adults as compared to young ones. These results advocated for an impaired proprioception in physiological ageing.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00736888/document

Presbypropria: the effects of physiological ageing on proprioceptive control

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00245700/document

Sensory supplementation system based on electrotactile tongue biofeedback of head position for balance control

The present paper introduces an original biofeedback system for improving human balance control, whose underlying principle consists in providing additional sensory information related to foot sole pressure distribution to the user through a tongue-placed tactile output device. To assess the effect of this biofeedback system on postural control during quiet standing, ten young healthy adults were asked to stand as immobile as possible with their eyes closed in two conditions of No-biofeedback and Biofeedback. Centre of foot pressure (CoP) displacements were recorded using a force platform. Results showed reduced CoP displacements in the Biofeedback relative to the No-biofeedback condition. The present findings evidenced the ability of the central nervous system to efficiently integrate an artificial plantar-based, tongue-placed tactile biofeedback for controlling control posture during quiet standing.

/pdf/controlling-posture-using-a-plantar-pressure-based-tongue-3am0tws4xa.pdf

Controlling posture using a plantar pressure-based, tongue-placed tactile biofeedback system.

Whereas the acuity of the position sense at the ankle can be disturbed by muscle fatigue, it recently also has been shown to be improved, under normal ankle neuromuscular state, through the use of an artificial tongue-placed tactile biofeedback. The underlying principle of this biofeedback consisted of supplying individuals with supplementary information about the position of their matching ankle position relative to their reference ankle position through electrotactile stimulation of the tongue. Within this context, the purpose of the present experiment was to investigate whether this biofeedback could mitigate the deleterious effect of muscle fatigue on joint position sense at the ankle. To address this objective, sixteen young healthy university students were asked to perform an active ankle-matching task in two conditions of No-fatigue and Fatigue of the ankle muscles and two conditions of No-biofeedback and Biofeedback. Measures of the overall accuracy and the variability of the positioning were determined using the absolute error and the variable error, respectively. Results showed that the availability of the biofeedback allowed the subjects to suppress the deleterious effects of muscle fatigue on joint position sense at the ankle. In the context of sensory re-weighting process, these findings suggested that the central nervous system was able to integrate and increase the relative contribution of the artificial tongue-placed tactile biofeedback to compensate for a proprioceptive degradation at the ankle.

/pdf/tongue-placed-tactile-biofeedback-suppresses-the-deleterious-ud42ksu24q.pdf

Tongue-placed tactile biofeedback suppresses the deleterious effects of muscle fatigue on joint position sense at the ankle

http://membres-timc.imag.fr/Yohan.Payan/papers/Pervasive_Mob_Comp_Vuillerme08.pdf

Olivier Chenu

Papers

Presbypropria: the effects of physiological ageing on proprioceptive control

Sensory supplementation system based on electrotactile tongue biofeedback of head position for balance control

Controlling posture using a plantar pressure-based, tongue-placed tactile biofeedback system.

Tongue-placed tactile biofeedback suppresses the deleterious effects of muscle fatigue on joint position sense at the ankle

A wireless embedded tongue tactile biofeedback system for balance control