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Effects of sensory augmentation on postural control and gait symmetry of transfemoral amputees: a case description

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Abstract

Despite recent advances in leg prosthetics, transfemoral amputees still experience limitations in postural control and gait symmetry. It has been hypothesized that artificial sensory information might improve the integration of the prosthesis into the human sensory-motor control loops and, thus, reduce these limitations. In three transfemoral amputees, we investigated the effect of Electrotactile Moving Sensation for Sensory Augmentation (EMSSA) without training and present preliminary findings. Experimental conditions included standing with open/closed eyes on stable/unstable ground as well as treadmill walking. For standing conditions, spatiotemporal posturographic measures and sample entropy were derived from the center of pressure. For walking conditions, step length and stance duration were calculated. Conditions without feedback showed effects congruent with findings in the literature, e.g., asymmetric weight bearing and step length, and validated the collected data. During standing, with EMSSA a tendency to influence postural control in a negative way was found: Postural control was less effective and less efficient and the prosthetic leg was less involved. Sample entropy tended to decrease, suggesting that EMSSA demanded increased attention. During walking, with EMSSA no persistent positive effect was found. This contrasts the positive subjective assessment and the positive effect on one subject’s step length.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation through the National Centre of Competence in Research Robotics, by the Gottfried und Julia Bangerter-Rhyner Stiftung, by an ETH research grant, and by the Marie-Curie career integration Grant PCIG13-GA-2013-618899. The authors would like to thank S. Bühler for her support during the experiments, G. Tschupp and the team of BalgristTec for providing their technical expertise, and the subjects who participated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sensory-Motor Systems Lab, Department of Health Science and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Anna Pagel, Robert Riener & Heike Vallery

  2. Medical Faculty, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Anna Pagel & Robert Riener

  3. Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Alejandro Hernandez Arieta

  4. Delft Biorobotics Lab, Department of Biomechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Heike Vallery

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  1. Anna Pagel
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  2. Alejandro Hernandez Arieta
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Correspondence to Anna Pagel.

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Pagel, A., Arieta, A.H., Riener, R. et al. Effects of sensory augmentation on postural control and gait symmetry of transfemoral amputees: a case description. Med Biol Eng Comput 54, 1579–1589 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-015-1432-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-015-1432-2

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