Evaluation of reach and grasp robot-assisted therapy suggests similar functional recovery patterns on proximal and distal arm segments in sub-acute hemiplegia

This paper provides some additional evidence in support of the hypothesis that robot therapies are clinically beneficial in neurorehabilitation. Although only 4 subjects were included in the study, the design of the intervention and the measures were done so as to minimise bias. The results are presented as single case studies, and can only be interpreted as such due to the study size. The intensity of intervention was 16 hours and the therapy philosophy (based on Carr and Shepherd) was that coordinated movements are preferable to joint based therapies, and that coordinating distal movements (in this case grasps) helps not only to recover function in these areas, but has greater value since the results are immediately transferable to daily skills such as reach and grasp movements.

An eight-parent multiparent advanced generation inter-cross population for winter-sown wheat: creation, properties, and validation

MAGIC populations represent one of a new generation of crop genetic mapping resources combining high genetic recombination and diversity. We describe the creation and validation of an eight-parent MAGIC population consisting of 1091 F7 lines of winter-sown wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Analyses based on genotypes from a 90,000-single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array find the population to be well-suited as a platform for fine-mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL) and gene isolation. Patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD) show the population to be highly recombined; genetic marker diversity among the founders was 74% of that captured in a larger set of 64 wheat varieties, and 54% of SNPs segregating among the 64 lines also segregated among the eight founder lines. In contrast, a commonly used reference bi-parental population had only 54% of the diversity of the 64 varieties with 27% of SNPs segregating. We demonstrate the potential of this MAGIC resource by identifying a highly diagnostic marker for the morphological character "awn presence/absence" and independently validate it in an association-mapping panel. These analyses show this large, diverse, and highly recombined MAGIC population to be a powerful resource for the genetic dissection of target traits in wheat, and it is well-placed to efficiently exploit ongoing advances in phenomics and genomics. Genetic marker and trait data, together with instructions for access to seed, are available at http://www.niab.com/MAGIC/.

Recent Ionospheric Observations Relating to Solar-Wind--Magnetosphere Coupling [and Discussion]

Simultaneous observations in the high-latitude ionosphere and in the near-Earth interplanetary medium have revealed the control exerted by the interplanetary magnetic field and the solar wind flow on field-perpendicular convection of plasma in both the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. Previous studies, using statistical surveys of data from both low-altitude polar-orbiting satellites and ground-based radars and magnetometers, have established that magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause is the dominant driving mechanism for convection. More recently, ground-based data and global auroral images of higher temporal resolution have been obtained and used to study the response of the ionospheric flows to changes in the interplanetary medium. These observations show that ionospheric convection responds rapidly (within a few minutes) to both increases and decreases in the reconnection rate over a range of spatial scales, as well as revealing transient enhancements which are also thought to be related to magnetopause phenomena. Such results emphasize the potential of ground-based radars and other remote-sensing instruments for studies of the Earth's interaction with the interplanetary medium.

On the 'special' status of emotional faces... Comment on Yang, Hong, and Blake (2010)

A wealth of literature suggests that emotional faces are given special status as visual objects: Cognitive models suggest that emotional stimuli, particularly threat-relevant facial expressions such as fear and anger, are prioritized in visual processing and may be identified by a subcortical “quick and dirty” pathway in the absence of awareness (Tamietto & de Gelder, 2010). Both neuroimaging studies (Williams, Morris, McGlone, Abbott, & Mattingley, 2004) and backward masking studies (Whalen, Rauch, Etcoff, McInerney, & Lee, 1998) have supported the notion of emotion processing without awareness. Recently, our own group (Adams, Gray, Garner, & Graf, 2010) showed adaptation to emotional faces that were rendered invisible using a variant of binocular rivalry: continual flash suppression (CFS, Tsuchiya & Koch, 2005). Here we (i) respond to Yang, Hong, and Blake's (2010) criticisms of our adaptation paper and (ii) provide a unified account of adaptation to facial expression, identity, and gender, under conditions of unawareness

FORCe: fully online and automated artifact removal for brain-computer interfacing

A fully automated and online artifact removal method for the electroencephalogram (EEG) is developed for use in brain-computer interfacing. The method (FORCe) is based upon a novel combination of wavelet decomposition, independent component analysis, and thresholding. FORCe is able to operate on a small channel set during online EEG acquisition and does not require additional signals (e.g. electrooculogram signals). Evaluation of FORCe is performed offline on EEG recorded from 13 BCI particpants with cerebral palsy (CP) and online with three healthy participants. The method outperforms the state-of the-art automated artifact removal methods Lagged auto-mutual information clustering (LAMIC) and Fully automated statistical thresholding (FASTER), and is able to remove a wide range of artifact types including blink, electromyogram (EMG), and electrooculogram (EOG) artifacts.

Using high-fidelity virtual reality to study perception in freely moving observers

Technological innovations have had a profound influence on how we study the sensory perception in humans and other animals. One example was the introduction of affordable computers, which radically changed the nature of visual experiments. It is clear that vision research is now at cusp of a similar shift, this time driven by the use of commercially available, low-cost, high- fidelity virtual reality (VR). In this review we will focus on: (a) the research questions VR allows experimenters to address and why these research questions are important, (b) the things that need to be considered when using VR to study human perception, (c) the drawbacks of current VR systems, and (d) the future direction vision research may take, now that VR has become a viable research tool.

Corticomuscular coherence modulation with the pattern of finger force coordination

We assess the corticomuscular coherence (CMC) of the contralateral primary motor cortex and the hand muscles during a finger force-tracking task and explore whether the pattern of finger coordination has an impact on the CMC level. Six healthy subjects (three men and three women) were recruited to conduct the force-tracking tasks comprising two finger patterns, i.e., natural combination of index and middle fingers and unnatural combination of index and middle fingers (i.e., simultaneously producing equal force strength in index and middle finger). During the conducting of the tasks with right index and middle finger, MEG and sEMG signals were recorded from left primary motor cortex (M1) and right flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS), respectively; the contralateral CMC was calculated to assess the neuromuscular interaction. Finger force-tracking tasks of Common-IM only induce beta-band CMC, whereas Uncommon-IM tasks produce CMC in both beta and low-gamma band. Compared to the force-tracking tasks of Common-IM, the Uncommon-IM task is associated with the most intensive contralateral CMC. Our study demonstrated that the pattern of finger coordination had significant impact on the CMC between the contralateral M1 and hand muscles, and more corticomuscular interaction was necessary for unnaturally coordinated finger activities to regulate the fixed neural drive of hand muscles.