Human Subjects

Emotion recognition is one of the important highlights of human emotional intelligence and has long been studied to be incorporated with machine intelligence argued to make machines even more intelligent. This paper aims to contribute to this field of study by enabling machines to recognize emotion from facial electromyogram (EMG) signals. This includes a compilation of the groups attempt to recognize basic facial expressions namely happy, angry, and sad through the use of EMG signals from facial muscles. The group extracted features from the three EMG signals from the face of two human subjects, a male and a female, and analyzed these features to serve as feature templates. Using a minimum-distance classifier, recognition rates exceeded the target accuracy - 85 percent - reaching 94.44 percent for both the male and female subjects.

In this paper multivariate spontaneous EEG signals from three broad groups of human subjects--control, seizure, and mania--were studied with the aim of investigating the possible effect of these pathologies on the degree of phase synchronization between cortical areas. The degree of phase synchrony was measured by two recently developed measures which are more suitable than classical indices like correlation or coherence when dealing with nonlinear and non-stationary signals like the EEG. Signals were reduced to seven frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha-1, alpha-2, beta-1, beta-2 and gamma) which were statistically compared between the normal and the other two groups. It was found that the degree of long-range synchrony was significantly reduced for both pathological groups as compared with the control group. No clear differences were found in the degrees of short-range synchrony.

Over the past few years, substantial progress has been made in the field of stem cell regeneration of the intervertebral disc. Autogenic mesenchymal stem cells in animal models can arrest intervertebral disc degeneration or even partially regenerate it and the effect is suggested to be dependent on the severity of degeneration. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are able to escape alloantigen recognition which is an advantage for allogenic transplantation. A number of injectable scaffolds have been described and various methods to pre-modulate MSCs’ activity have been tested. In future, work will need to address the use of mesenchymal stem cells in large animal models and the fate of the implanted mesenchymal stem cells, particularly in the long term, in animals. This review examines the state-of-the-art in the field of stem cell regeneration of the intervertebral disc, and critically discusses, with scientific support, the issues involved, before stem cells could be used in human subjects.

We discuss some theoretical models for vital signs monitoring by using a UWB radar. Focusing attention on the respiration and heartbeat signals, we show the impact of relevant parameters, like the sampling time interval, on the ability to extract the desired signal parameters from the waveforms elaborated at the receiver. The role of the UWB pulse shape is also highlighted. With reference to more refined methods based on signal correlation, we propose a variant that does not need the availability of a locally generated reference signal and achieves good resolution for the movement detection, while ensuring limited processing times.

Dietary lignans are phyto-oestrogens that possibly influence human health. The present review deals with lignan bioavailability, the study of which is crucial to determine to what extent metabolism, absorption and excretion of lignans alter their biological properties. Since intestinal bacteria play a major role in lignan conversion, for instance by producing the enterolignans enterodiol and enterolactone, emphasis is put on data obtained in recent bacteriological studies.

The pressure-area relation of coronary arteries provides important information about the mechanical properties of these vessels. In human subjects methodological limitations have precluded measurement of instantaneous compliance and coronary stress in vivo. The purpose of this study was to assess a new method for measuring instantaneous values of coronary artery compliance and wall stress utilizing simultaneously acquired pressure and intravascular ultrasound measurements of vessel area. Ten subjects with coronary artery disease had intravascular ultrasound studies of the proximal left anterior descending or circumflex coronary arteries. Coronary luminal area was measured with a 30-MHz (3F or 3.5F) intravascular ultrasound catheter and simultaneous coronary pressure measured with a 2F micromanometer-tipped catheter. Using this technique the nonlinear pressure-area relation and mean circumferential wall stress were determined over the physiological pressure range. Coronary artery com...

The time of occurrence of eye, head, and arm movements directed at the same visual target was measured in five human subjects. The latency of activation of the corresponding neck and arm muscles was also measured. It appears that although the overt movements are sequentially ordered (starting with the eye movement, then the head and finally the arm) the EMG discharges are synchronous with respect to the eye movement onset. In addition, eye movement latency appears definitely (though weakly) correlated with either neck or arm EMG latencies. Neck and arm EMG latencies are also mutually correlated. These results indicate a clustering of segmental motor programs for target oriented actions.

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a silent epidemic that affects at least 1.4 million people in the U.S. each year. An estimated 5.3 million Americans are living with disabilities resulting from TBI, and another 80,000 to 90,000 people join their numbers annually (Langlois et al, 2005). Research that provides a deeper understanding of the patient’s perspective can provide clinicians and others with valuable insights into the lives of TBI survivors and the

Current methods of coding recall, summarization, talk-aloud, and question-answering data are inherently unreliable and not effectively documented. If the process of coding protocol data could even be partially automated, this would be an im- portant scientific advance in the field of text comprehension. Twenty-four human subjects read and recalled each of four short texts. Half of the human recall data

Background "Use it or lose it" is a well known saying which is applicable to boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Besides the direct effects of the muscular dystrophy, the increasing effort to perform activities, the fear of falling and the use of personal aids indirectly impair leg and arm functions as a result of disuse. Physical training could oppose this secondary physical deterioration. The No Use is Disuse (NUD) study is the first study in human subjects with DMD that will examine whether a low-intensity physical training is beneficial in terms of preservation of muscle endurance and functional abilities. The study consists of two training intervention studies: study 1 "Dynamic leg and arm training for ambulant and recently wheelchair-dependent boys with DMD and, study 2 "Functional training with arm support for boys with DMD who have been confined to a wheelchair for several years". This paper describes the hypotheses and methods of the NUD study. Methods Study 1 is an explorative randomized controlled trial with multiple baseline measurements. Thirty boys with a DNA-established diagnosis of DMD will be included. The intervention consists of a six-months physical training during which boys train their legs and arms with active and/or assisted cycling training equipment. The primary study outcomes are muscle endurance and functional abilities, assessed with a Six-Minute Bicycle Test and the Motor Function Measure. Study 2 has a within-group repeated measurements design and will include ten boys with DMD who have already been confined to a wheelchair for several years. The six-months physical training program consists of 1) a computer-assisted training and 2) a functional training with an arm support. The primary study outcome is functional abilities of the upper extremity, assessed with the Action Research Arm Test. Discussion The NUD study will fill part of the gap in the current knowledge about the possible effects of training in boys with DMD and will increase insight into what type of exercise should be recommended to boys with DMD. The study will finish at the end of 2010 and results are expected in 2011. Trial registration The Netherlands National Trial Register1631