Article

C5 / C6 tetraplegic patients and transhumeral amputees may be able to use voluntary
shoulder motion as command signals for a functional electrical stimulation (FES)
system or transhumeral prosthesis. Stereotyped relationships, termed postural
synergies, among the shoulder, forearm, and wrist joints emerge during
goal-oriented reaching and transport movements as performed by able-bodied
subjects. Thus, the posture of the shoulder can potentially be used to infer the
desired posture of the elbow and forearm joints during reaching and transporting
movements. We investigated how well ablebodied subjects could learn to use a
non-invasive command scheme based on inferences from these postural synergies to
control a simulated transhumeral prosthesis in a virtual reality task. We
compared the performance of subjects using the inferential command scheme (ICS)
with subjects operating the simulated prosthesis in virtual reality according to
complete motion tracking of their actual arm and hand movements. Initially
subjects performed poorly with the ICS but improved rapidly with modest amounts
of practice, eventually achieving performance only slightly less than subjects
using complete motion tracking. Thus, inferring the desired movement of distal
joints from voluntary shoulder movements appears to be an intuitive and
non-invasive approach to obtaining command signals for prostheses to restore
reaching and grasping functions.

Langue : ANGLAIS

Tiré à part : OUI