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INNOVATION FOR INDEPENDENCE
ISSUE 86 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2012 £6.95
Muscle signal development excites experts By Helen Williams
surface, back to the half-centre.
THE muscle signals that control walking have been recreated in a robotics version by a team from the University of Arizona.
Matt Thornton, gait analysis laboratory manager at the UK's Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, said: “Previous robotic models have mimicked human movement: this one goes further and mimics the underlying human control mechanisms driving that movement.
Experts in the UK have hailed the work as having “very exciting implications for increased understanding of patients with spinal cord injury.” Writing in the Journal of Neural Engineering, the team described how they replicated the central pattern generator (CPG) – a nerve cell (neuronal) network in the lumbar region of the spinal cord that generates rhythmic muscle signals. The CPG produces, and then controls, these signals by gathering information from different parts of the body involved in walking, responding to the environment. This is what allows people to walk without thinking about it. The simplest form of a CPG is called a halfcentre, which consists of just two neurons that fire signals alternatively, producing a rhythm, as well as sensors that deliver information, such as when a leg meets a
“It may offer a new approach to investigate and understand the link between nervous system control problems and walking pathologies.” Existing systems for analysing how people walk, so-called gait analysis performed by the RNOH and others, accurately measure hip, knee, and ankle joint movements in 3D while patients walk on a treadmill. Matt said: “The robotic model may go one step further than conventional gait analysis, in linking these problems to the nervous system, which actually controls the movement.” He added: “The implications for increased understanding of, for example, patients with spinal cord injury are very exciting.”
Oscar Pistorius has become the first amputee sprinter to be selected to compete in the Olympics. Oscar was banned from competing alongside able-bodied athletes just before the 2008 Olympics – a ruling he later had overturned. He has expressed his delight at being selected to run in the individual men’s 400m and 4x400m relay on behalf of Team South Africa. Full story: Page 21