MInD: moving in the dark.

Visually-impaired people can develop several unhealthy behaviors, including the lack of physical activity or sports, due to the incomplete maturity in the control of their body in the space. This research focuses on the creation of an "exergame" - a videogame especially designed to stimulate physical exercise - that, through voice commands, allows the visually impaired users to practice physical activity and train their abilities. This tool has been developed starting from an existing dance-game, by generating some appropriate interfaces that also involve the sensory channel of sight. Our research aims to study the effects related to this exergame on the motor control mechanism in a blind children's group, aged between 8 and 13 years: it focuses also on the joint use of movement analysis systems and of videogames in order to stimulate the physical activity in these subjects.

Functional fields in human auditory cortex revealed by time-resolved fMRI without interference of EPI noise.

The gradient switching during fast echoplanar functional magnetic resonance imaging (EPI-fMRI) produces loud noises that may interact with the functional activation of the central auditory system induced by experimental acoustic stimuli. This interaction is unpredictable and is likely to confound the interpretation of functional maps of the auditory cortex. In the present study we used an experimental design which does not require the presentation of stimuli during EPI acquisitions and allows for mapping of the auditory cortex without the interference of scanner noise. The design relies on the physiological delays between the onset, or the end, of stimulation and the corresponding hemodynamic response. Owing to these delays and through a time-resolved acquisition protocol it is possible to analyze the decay of the stimulus-specific signal changes after the cessation of the stimulus itself and before the onset of the EPI-acoustic noise related activation (decay-sampling technique). This experimental design, which might permit a more detailed insight in the auditory cortex, has been applied to the study of the cortical responses to pulsed 1000 Hz sine tones. Distinct activation clusters were detected in the Heschl's gyri and the planum temporale, with an increased extension compared to a conventional block-design paradigm. Furthermore, the comparison of the hemodynamic response of the most anterior and the posterior clusters of activation highlighted differential response patterns to the sound stimulation and to the EPI-noise. These differences, attributable to reciprocal saturation effects unevenly distributed over the superior temporal cortex, provided evidence for functionally distinct auditory fields.

An adjustment method for spinal cord stimulators based on simplified gait analysis (1).

The use of electrical stimulators, for pain relief, spasticity reduction, and other applications, is greatly increasing; the programming facilities of the new devices extend the application range and allow to reduce the manufacturing costs. On the other side it is necessary to define methodologies and protocols for a custom setting of these devices. This work, although for only one patient, is a proposal for a methodology, based on a simplified gait analysis, for the adjustment of a spinal cord electrical stimulator.