Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children

Background: Several neurodevelopmental disorders and brain injuries in children have been associated with proprioceptive dysfunction that will negatively affect their movement. Unfortunately, there is lack of reliable and objective clinical examination protocols and our current knowledge of how pro...

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Main Authors: Marini, Francesca, Squeri, Valentina, Morasso, Pietro, Campus, Claudio, Konczak, Jürgen, Masia, Lorenzo
Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2017
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/85014
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/42097
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-850142023-03-04T17:14:11Z Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children Marini, Francesca Squeri, Valentina Morasso, Pietro Campus, Claudio Konczak, Jürgen Masia, Lorenzo School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Developmental changes Proprioception Background: Several neurodevelopmental disorders and brain injuries in children have been associated with proprioceptive dysfunction that will negatively affect their movement. Unfortunately, there is lack of reliable and objective clinical examination protocols and our current knowledge of how proprioception evolves in typically developing children is still sparse. Methods: Using a robotic exoskeleton, we investigated proprioceptive acuity of the wrist in a group of 49 typically developing healthy children (8–15 years), and a group of 40 young adults. Without vision participants performed an ipsilateral wrist joint position matching task that required them to reproduce (match) a previously experienced target position. All three joint degrees-of-freedom of the wrist/hand complex were assessed. Accuracy and precision were evaluated as a measure of proprioceptive acuity. The cross-sectional data indicating the time course of development of acuity were then fitted by four models in order to determine which function best describes developmental changes in proprioception across age. Results: First, the robot-aided assessment proved to be an easy to administer method for objectively measuring proprioceptive acuity in both children and adult populations. Second, proprioceptive acuity continued to develop throughout middle childhood and early adolescence, improving by more than 50% with respect to the youngest group. Adult levels of performance were reached approximately by the age of 12 years. An inverse-root function best described the development of proprioceptive acuity across the age groups. Third, wrist/forearm proprioception is anisotropic across the three DoFs with the Abduction/Adduction exhibiting a higher level of acuity than those of Flexion/extension and Pronation/Supination. This anisotropy did not change across development. Conclusions: Proprioceptive development for the wrist continues well into early adolescence. Our normative data obtained trough this novel robot-aided assessment method provide a basis against which proprioceptive function of pediatric population can be compared. This may aid the design of more effective sensorimotor intervention programs. Published version 2017-02-16T07:49:48Z 2019-12-06T15:55:32Z 2017-02-16T07:49:48Z 2019-12-06T15:55:32Z 2017 Journal Article Marini, F., Squeri, V., Morasso, P., Campus, C., Konczak, J., & Masia, L. (2017). Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 14(3), 1-10. 1743-0003 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/85014 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/42097 10.1186/s12984-016-0215-9 en Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation © The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. 10 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Developmental changes
Proprioception
spellingShingle Developmental changes
Proprioception
Marini, Francesca
Squeri, Valentina
Morasso, Pietro
Campus, Claudio
Konczak, Jürgen
Masia, Lorenzo
Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children
description Background: Several neurodevelopmental disorders and brain injuries in children have been associated with proprioceptive dysfunction that will negatively affect their movement. Unfortunately, there is lack of reliable and objective clinical examination protocols and our current knowledge of how proprioception evolves in typically developing children is still sparse. Methods: Using a robotic exoskeleton, we investigated proprioceptive acuity of the wrist in a group of 49 typically developing healthy children (8–15 years), and a group of 40 young adults. Without vision participants performed an ipsilateral wrist joint position matching task that required them to reproduce (match) a previously experienced target position. All three joint degrees-of-freedom of the wrist/hand complex were assessed. Accuracy and precision were evaluated as a measure of proprioceptive acuity. The cross-sectional data indicating the time course of development of acuity were then fitted by four models in order to determine which function best describes developmental changes in proprioception across age. Results: First, the robot-aided assessment proved to be an easy to administer method for objectively measuring proprioceptive acuity in both children and adult populations. Second, proprioceptive acuity continued to develop throughout middle childhood and early adolescence, improving by more than 50% with respect to the youngest group. Adult levels of performance were reached approximately by the age of 12 years. An inverse-root function best described the development of proprioceptive acuity across the age groups. Third, wrist/forearm proprioception is anisotropic across the three DoFs with the Abduction/Adduction exhibiting a higher level of acuity than those of Flexion/extension and Pronation/Supination. This anisotropy did not change across development. Conclusions: Proprioceptive development for the wrist continues well into early adolescence. Our normative data obtained trough this novel robot-aided assessment method provide a basis against which proprioceptive function of pediatric population can be compared. This may aid the design of more effective sensorimotor intervention programs.
author2 School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
author_facet School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Marini, Francesca
Squeri, Valentina
Morasso, Pietro
Campus, Claudio
Konczak, Jürgen
Masia, Lorenzo
format Article
author Marini, Francesca
Squeri, Valentina
Morasso, Pietro
Campus, Claudio
Konczak, Jürgen
Masia, Lorenzo
author_sort Marini, Francesca
title Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children
title_short Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children
title_full Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children
title_fullStr Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children
title_full_unstemmed Robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children
title_sort robot-aided developmental assessment of wrist proprioception in children
publishDate 2017
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/85014
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/42097
_version_ 1759857443316170752