Design and Validation of a Wireless Body Sensor Network for Integrated EEG and HD-sEMG Acquisitions.

Sensorimotor integration is the process through which the human brain plans the motor program execution according to external sources. Within this context, corticomuscular and corticokinematic coherence analyses are common methods to investigate the mechanism underlying the central control of muscle activation. This requires the synchronous acquisition of several physiological signals, including EEG and sEMG. Nevertheless, physical constraints of the current, mostly wired, technologies limit their application in dynamic and naturalistic contexts. In fact, although many efforts were made in the development of biomedical instrumentation for EEG and High Density-surface EMG (HD-sEMG) signal acquisition, the need for an integrated wireless system is emerging. We hereby describe the design and validation of a new fully wireless body sensor network for the integrated acquisition of EEG and HD-sEMG signals. This Body Sensor Network is composed of wireless bio-signal acquisition modules, named sensor units, and a set of synchronization modules used as a general-purpose system for time-locked recordings. The system was characterized in terms of accuracy of the synchronization and quality of the collected signals. An in-depth characterization of the entire system and an head-to-head comparison of the wireless EEG sensor unit with a wired benchmark EEG device were performed. The proposed device represents an advancement of the State-of-the-Art technology allowing the integrated acquisition of EEG and HD-sEMG signals for the study of sensorimotor integration.

Changes in the distribution of muscle activity when using a passive trunk exoskeleton depend on the type of working task: A high-density surface EMG study.

Exoskeleton effectiveness in reducing muscle efforts has been usually assessed from surface electromyograms (EMGs) collected locally. It has been demonstrated, however, muscle activity redistributes within the low back muscles during static and dynamic contractions, suggesting the need of detecting surface EMGs from a large muscle region to reliably investigate changes in global muscle activation. This study used high-density surface EMG to assess the effects of a passive trunk exoskeleton on the distribution of low back muscles' activity during different working tasks. Ten, male volunteers performed a static and a dynamic task with and without the exoskeleton. Multiple EMGs were sampled bilaterally from the lumbar erector spinae muscles while the hip and knee angles were measured unilaterally. Key results revealed for the static task exoskeleton led to a decrease in the average root mean square (RMS) amplitude (∼10%) concomitantly with a stable mean frequency and a redistribution of muscle activity (∼0.5 cm) in the caudal direction toward the end of the task. For the dynamic task, the exoskeleton reduced the RMS amplitude (∼5%) at the beginning of the task and the variability in the muscle activity distribution during the task. Moreover, a reduced range of motion in the lower limb was observed when using the exoskeleton during the dynamic task. Current results support the notion the passive exoskeleton has the potential to alleviate muscular loading at low back level especially for the static task.

The Effect of Number of Gait Cycles on Principal Activation Extraction.

To cope with the high intra-subject variability of muscle activation intervals, a large amount of gait cycles is necessary to clearly document physiological or pathological muscle activity patterns during human locomotion. The Clustering for Identification of Muscle Activation Pattern (CIMAP) algorithm has been proposed to help clinicians obtaining a synthetic and clear description of normal and pathological muscle functions in human walking. Moreover, this algorithm allows the extraction of Principal Activations (PAs), defined as those muscle activations that are strictly necessary to perform a specific task and occur in every gait cycle. This contribution aims at assessing the impact of the number of gait cycles on the extraction of the PAs. Results demonstrated no statistically significant differences between PAs extracted considering different numbers of gait cycles, revealing, on average, similarity values higher than 0.88.Clinical Relevance-This contribution demonstrates the potential applicability of the CIMAP algorithm to the analysis of subjects affected by neurological disorders, for whom the assessment of motor functions may be of the uttermost importance and only a reduced number of gait cycles can be acquired.

Muscle synergies for the control of single-limb stance with and without visual information in young individuals.

PURPOSE: Single-limb stance is a demanding postural task featuring a high number of daily living and sporting activities. Thus, it is widely used for training and rehabilitation, as well as for balance assessment. Muscle activations around single joints have been previously described, however, it is not known which are the muscle synergies used to control posture and how they change between conditions of normal and lack of visual information. METHODS: Twenty-two healthy young participants were asked to perform a 30 s single-limb stance task in open-eyes and closed-eyes condition while standing on a force platform with the dominant limb. Muscle synergies were extracted from the electromyographical recordings of 13 muscles of the lower limb, hip, and back. The optimal number of synergies, together with the average recruitment level and balance control strategies were analyzed and compared between the open- and the closed-eyes condition. RESULTS: Four major muscle synergies, two ankle-dominant synergies, one knee-dominant synergy, and one hip/back-dominant synergy were found. No differences between open- and closed-eyes conditions were found for the recruitment level, except for the hip/back synergy, which significantly decreased (p = 0.02) in the closed-eyes compared to the open-eyes condition. A significant increase (p = 0.03) of the ankle balance strategy was found in the closed-eyes compared to the open-eyes condition. CONCLUSION: In healthy young individuals, single-limb stance is featured by four major synergies, both in open- and closed-eyes condition. Future studies should investigate muscle synergies in participants with other age groups, as well as pathological conditions.

How to Improve Robustness in Muscle Synergy Extraction.

The muscle synergy theory was widely used in literature to assess the modular organization of the central nervous system (CNS) during human locomotion. The extraction of muscle synergies may be strongly influenced by the preprocessing techniques applied to surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals. The aim of this contribution is to assess the robustness improvement in muscle synergy extraction obtained using an innovative pre-processing technique with respect to the standard procedure. The new pre-processing technique that we propose is based on the extraction of principal muscle activation intervals (necessary to accomplish a specific biomechanical task during gait) from the original sEMG signals, discarding the secondary muscle activation intervals (activations that occur only in some strides with auxiliary functions). Results suggest that the extraction of the principal activation intervals from sEMG provide a more consistent and stable description of the modular organization of the CNS with respect to the standard pre-processing procedure.

A humanized anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha monoclonal antibody that acts as a partial, competitive antagonist of the template antibody.

We have constructed several humanized versions of a monoclonal antibody (MAb78) against human tumor necrosis factor-alpha (huTNF-alpha) retaining the complementarity-determining regions (CDR) of the original mouse MAb with or without a variable number of original framework region (FR) residues. All versions, except one, showed a loss of binding affinity and neutralizing potency of at least 10-fold compared to the original mouse MAb or its chimeric equivalent. In some cases, however, the decrease in neutralizing potency was significantly greater than the decrease in binding affinity. Two humanized versions showing the greatest dissociation between these two parameters were studied for their capacity to inhibit the neutralizing activity of chimeric or murine MAb78 when used at concentrations that bound but only partially neutralized huTNF-alpha. One humanized version (MAb78D) was indeed able to do so, whereas the other (MAb78C) was not found to exert any inhibitory activity at all concentrations tested. The antagonistic effect of MAb78D was concentration dependent and could be overcome by increasing the concentrations of chimeric or murine MAb78. Two different models of MAb78-huTNF-alpha interaction that may help explain the antagonist activity of humanized MAb78D are discussed.

Mode of interaction between tumor necrosis factor alpha and a monoclonal antibody expressing a recurrent idiotype.

Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF alpha) is an inflammatory cytokine which exists mainly as a 51kD complex built up of 3 identical, noncovalently-linked polypeptide subunits. We have raised monoclonal antibodies (mAb) against human TNF alpha (huTNF alpha). One of these mAb (mAb78, mouse IgG1k) was studied in detail. mAb78 expresses a recurrent idiotype typical of the BALB/c anti-huTNF alpha antibody response. HuTNF alpha bound to mAb78 with an affinity constant (Kobs) of 3.2 x 10(10)M-1. The number of huTNF alpha-binding sites per mAb78 molecule was approximately 0.7. At concentrations higher than the Kobs mAb78 neutralized huTNF alpha at a approximately 1.3:1 molar ratio. mAb78 precipitated huTNF alpha in a double immunodiffusion assay in agar. Gel-filtration experiments of mAb78-huTNF alpha mixtures, that had been set up in large antigen excess, detected complexes of 570 kD as the smallest ones formed under these conditions. We propose that these results are accommodated best by a model according to which cyclic complexes built up of 3 mAb78 and 2 huTNF alpha molecules are the smallest units formed upon interaction of the reagents. In view of this model we discuss how huTNF alpha and mAb78 can undergo a precipitin reaction.

In vivo effects in mice of an anti-T cell immunotoxin.

We have evaluated both the proliferative response as well as the Thy-1 Ag expression of lymphocytes from mice treated in vivo with an anti-Thy-1 immunotoxin (IT). The IT was a rat IgG2c mAb recognizing the Thy-1 Ag, disulfide-linked to a ribosome-inactivating protein isolated from the seeds of the plant Saponaria officinalis (soapwort). Toxicity studies showed that a single i.v. injection of doses up to 20 micrograms IT/mouse was well tolerated and allowed indefinite survival. The Con A-induced proliferative response of spleen cells from mice killed 1 day after treatment with sublethal doses of IT was inhibited in a dose-dependent manner, with complete inhibition observed at doses of greater than or equal to 5 micrograms IT/mouse. Control experiments showed that the inhibition was due to the IT and not to its single components. Moreover, the IT effect was abolished by a large (100-fold) excess of anti-Thy-1 mAb alone given concurrently, but not by an unrelated, isotype-matched rat mAb. At all IT doses, the proliferative response to a B cell mitogen (LPS) was normal. Kinetic studies showed a time- and dose-dependent reconstitution of Con A responsiveness. In limiting dilution cultures of spleen cells from mice treated with 5 micrograms IT 1 or 4 days before death, a 97% depletion of T lymphocytes capable of proliferation was observed. Limiting dilution cultures showed that also the thymus of IT-treated mice was depleted by more than 90% of growth-competent T lymphocytes. Cytofluorographic studies of Thy-1+ cells from the spleens of IT-treated mice gave results which did not correlate with those obtained in functional assays. Thus, a dose-dependent reduction, followed by a time-dependent reconstitution of Thy-1+ cells was observed in this case too, but the depletion occurred at later time points and was less complete than that observed in functional assays. Moreover, the mean fluorescence intensity of the residual Thy-1+ cells decreased below normal levels.