The influence of additional visual feedback (VF) on stance control was studied under conditions of changed afferent information from the foot sole and ankle joint due to different support surfaces. The changes of body sway amplitudes were analyzed and their frequency spectrum was established. The effect of visual feedback on the amplitude and frequency characteristics of human stance was manifested as: a) a decrease of the mean amplitude of body sway during visual feedback, corresponding to the decrease of power spectrum density (PSD) of stabilograms in the frequency range below 0.05 Hz, b) an increase of mean velocity of body sway corresponding to the increase of PSD of stabilograms in the frequency range of 0.4-1.5 Hz. The results showed that the improvement of the upright stance by additional visual feedback is mainly mediated through activation of postural muscles at the ankle level, or ankle strategy. The stabilization effect of VF on stance control is slight or negligible if the performance part in ankle joint (narrow support) was reduced.
Never before in history data has been generated at such high volumes as it is today. It is estimated that every year about 1 Exabyte (= 1 Million Terabyte) of data are generated, of which a large portion is available in digital form. Exploring and analyzing the vast volumes of data becomes increasingly difficult. This paper describes system Vitamin-S that aims to help when analyzing very large data sets.
Visual cognitive responses (P300) to moving stimuli were tested in 36 subjects with the aim to find the normal range of P300 parameters. Concomitantly, the circadian intra-individual variability of the P300 was studied in a subgroup of 6 subjects. Visual stimuli consisted of either coherent (frequent stimulus) or non-coherent motion (random stimulus). The oddball paradigm was applied for recording cognitive responses. P300 to rare stimuli had an average latency of 447.3±46.6 ms and amplitude of 12.9±6.0 mV. The average reaction time was in the range from 322 to 611 ms and there was no correlation between the reaction time and P300 latency. We did not find any significant circadian changes of the P300 parameters in the 6 subjects tested four times during the same day. Cognitive (event-related) responses (P300) displayed distinctly greater inter-individual variability (S.D. of 50 ms) when compared with pattern-reversal and motion-onset VEPs (S.D. of 6.0 ms and 14 ms, respectively). For this reason, the clinical use of P300 elicited by this kind of visual stimuli seems to be rather restricted and the evaluation of its intra-individual changes is preferable., Z. Kubová, J. Kremláček, J. Szanyi, J. Chlubnová, M. Kuba., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Some recent studies on dyslexia have suggested a selective abnormality in the magnocellular visual pathway. To verify this hypothesis, we investigated motion-onset visual evoked potentials (VEPs) (predominantly testing the magnocellular system) as well as pattern-reversal VEPs (presumably testing the parvocellular system) in 20 dyslexics and 16 controls (both groups with a mean age of 10.0 years). Although the latencies and amplitudes of the main positive peak of pattern-reversal VEPs did not differ between the dyslexic and control group, the motion specific negative peak of motion-onset VEPs was significantly delayed (p<0.001) in dyslexics. Our results confirm a selective magnocellular pathway disorder in dyslexics and indicate that the motion-onset VEPs might serve as an objective method for early diagnosis of dyslexia.
The purpose was to test parameters of visual evoked potentials (VEPs) and of event-related potentials (ERPs) in deaf subjects to verify visual and cognitive CNS functions in a handicapped group of the population. Three types of visual stimuli (with dominating parvocellular or magnocellular system activation or with cognitive tasks) were used in the study. Six deaf persons (4 women, 2 men, mean age 17 years) and 6 persons with normal hearing (sex- and age-matched) were included in this pilot study. In all types of stimulation, latencies and amplitudes of main VEPs and ERPs components were evaluated. No significant latency differences were found. However, significantly reduced amplitudes were found in the occipital area for responses to motion and cognitive stimuli which might be interpreted as a part of functional reorganization of the extrastriate and cognitive cortical areas of deaf subjects.
Based on the fact that tremors display some distinct 3D spatial
characteristics, we decided to visualize tremor planes in 3D
space. We obtained 3-axial linear accelerometer signals of hand
tremors from 58 patients with Parkinson´s disease (PD), 37 with
isolated resting tremor (iRT), 75 with essential tremor (ET), and
44 healthy volunteers with physiological tremor (Ph). For each
group analysis was done with subsequent spatial 3D regression
of the input data i.e. along the x, y and z axes; the projected
vector lengths in the individual (vertical transversal XY, vertical
longitudinal XZ and horizontal YZ) reference frame planes and
their angles. Most meaningful and statistically significant
differences were found in the analyses of the 3D vector lengths.
The tremor of the PD and the iRT group was oriented mainly in
the horizontal YZ plane. The tremors of the patients with ET and
Ph were oriented approximately in the midway between the all
three referential planes with less tilt toward the vertical
longitudinal XZ plane.