Articles
Publication Date: 2024
Computers in Biology and Medicine (00104825)174
Background and objective: Gait disorders stemming from brain lesions or chemical imbalances, pose significant challenges for patients. Proposed treatments encompass medication, deep brain stimulation, physiotherapy, and visual stimulation. Music, with its harmonious structures, serves as a continuous reference, synchronizing muscle activities through neural connections between hearing and motor functions, can show promise in gait disorder management. This study explores the influence of heightened music rhythm on young healthy participants' gait cadence in three conditions: FeedForward (independent rhythm), FeedBack (cadence-synced rhythm), and Adaptive (cadence-controlled musical experience). The objective is to increase gait cadence through rhythm modulation during walking. Method: The study involved 18 young healthy participants (13 males and 5 females) who did not have any gait or hearing disorders. Each participant completed the gait task in the three aforementioned conditions. Each condition was comprised of three sessions: 1) Baseline, where participants walked while listening to the original music; 2) Intervention, changing the music rhythm to affect the gait cadence; and 3) Realign, replaying the original music and measuring the durability of the effect of the Intervention session. The measurement tool was a pair of footwear equipped with push-button switches that transmited the foot-to-ground contact to the LabVIEW® software, all designed by the research team. Repeated measures of ANOVA was employed to evaluate the impact of the sessions and conditions. Results: In all three conditions, there was a significant effect of music on increasing gait cadence during Intervention and Realign sessions (p < 0.001). Additionally, the immediate impact of music on gait cadence in the Adaptive condition was superior to the other conditions. Conclusion: The study findings indicate that increasing the rhythm of music during walking has a significant impact on gait cadence among young healthy participants. This effect remained significant even after realigning the music to normal. It could be harnessed to support the rehabilitation of individuals with movement disorders characterized by a decrease in movement speed, such as Parkinson's disease. Moreover, the results indicate that the Adaptive method showed promising outcomes, suggesting its potential for further exploration as an effective means to control gait cadence. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd
Foroushani, N.S.,
Mohammadkhani, P.,
Rasti, J. Publication Date: 2024
Iranian Journal of Ageing (1735806X)19(2)pp. 314-327
Objective: One of the most common issues of old age is chronic pain. The aim of mindfulness-based approaches is to create psychological flexibility and change attitudes towards pain. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on the symptoms of pain perception in older women Methods and Materials: It was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test and one-month follow-up with a control group. The statistical population was 60 and older women lived in Isfahan in 1402. Among them 30 women were selected by available sampling method and using the entry criteria and randomly assigned to equal experimental and control groups. The research tool was the short form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire. The experimental group received the intervention in eight two-hour sessions and the control group was placed on the waiting list. The data were analyzed by repeated measure analysis of variance using SPSS-25 software. Results: : The average age of the participants of the experimental group was 64.07±3.37 and the control group was 64.20±3.57, the average total pain perception score of the experimental and control groups was reported as 22.67 and 35.13 respectively in the post-test phase and 23.60 and 35.07 respectively in the follow-up phase. The results showed that there is a significant difference between the average of the three assessment stages (pre-test, post-test and follow-up) in all subscales and the total score (P<0.01). The results of the Benferroni test indicated the effectiveness of the treatment in the post-test and follow-up phase for all subscales compared to the control group (P≤0.05). Conclusion: The use of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy significantly leads to the reduction of pain perception in older women. © (2024), (Negah Institute for Scientific Communication). All Rights Reserved.
Emotion recognition is a challenging task due to the emotional gap between subjective feeling and low-level audio-visual characteristics. Thus, the development of a feasible approach for high-performance emotion recognition might enhance human-computer interaction. Deep learning methods have enhanced the performance of emotion recognition systems in comparison to other current methods. In this paper, a multimodal deep convolutional neural network (CNN) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network are proposed, which fuses the audio and visual cues in a deep model. The spatial and temporal features extracted from video frames are fused with short-term Fourier transform (STFT) extracted from audio signals. Finally, a Softmax classifier is used to classify inputs into seven groups: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral mode. The proposed model is evaluated on Surrey Audio-Visual Expressed Emotion (SAVEE) database with an accuracy of 95.48%. Our experimental study reveals that the suggested method is more effective than existing algorithms in adapting to emotion recognition in this dataset. © 2023 IEEE.
Behrouz jazi, A.H.,
Rasti, J.,
Etemadifar, M. Publication Date: 2023
Journal of Clinical Neuroscience (09675868)116pp. 104-111
Background: Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) often experience balance issues during physical activities. Traditional rehabilitation exercises such as stretching, resistance, and aerobic training have been found to be effective, but can be repetitive and tedious, leading to reduced patient motivation and adherence. Furthermore, direct supervision by a therapist is not always possible. Methods: The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual training program incorporating visual feedback from the Kinect® sensor in male patients with multiple sclerosis. Forty-five participants, with an age range of 22–56 years (mean age = 39), were randomly assigned to one of three equal groups, including two experimental groups and one control group. The experimental groups participated in eight-week exercise interventions, with each session lasting 20 to 30 min and occurring three times per week. In contrast, the control group received no interventions. Within the experimental groups, one was exposed to conventional balance exercises, whereas the other engaged in the proposed virtual training program. Both of these groups undertook three balance exercises, namely the single-foot stance, lunge maneuvers, and arm/leg stretching routines. The assessment encompassed diverse facets of balance, including parameters of 10 Meter Walk Time, Berg Balance Scale, Static Balance Score, and Time-Up and Go Scale, as well as the quality of life, gauged through the Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life (MSQOL)-54 Questionnaire. The effect of test variables was investigated using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), while the independent samples t-test was used to check for significant differences among the groups. The effects of the groups were compared using a paired samples t-test. Results: The findings revealed that both rehabilitation programs positively affected the dependent variables compared to the control group. However, the significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental groups indicated the effectiveness of the proposed program compared to the traditional method. Conclusions: Entertaining virtual training programs utilizing visual feedback can be effective for rehabilitating patients with MS. The proposed method enables patients to perform rehabilitation exercises at home with high motivation, while accurate information about the treatment process are provided to the therapist. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
