Movement patterns

Ocular torsion and vertical divergence reflect the brain's sensorimotor integration of motion through the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) and the optokinetic reflex (OKR) to roll rotations. Torsion and vergence however express different response patterns depending on several motion variables, but research on their temporal dynamics remains limited. This study investigated the onset times of ocular torsion (OT) and vertical vergence (VV) during visual, vestibular, and visuovestibular motion, as well as their relative decay rates following prolonged optokinetic stimulations...

Aeromonas hydrophila is an opportunistic motile pathogen with a broad host range, infecting both terrestrial and aquatic animals. Environmental and geographical conditions exert selective pressure on both geno- and phenotypes of pathogens. Flagellin, directly exposed to external environments and containing important immunogenic epitopes, may display significant variability in response to external conditions. In this study, we conducted a comparative analysis of ~  150 A. hydrophila genomes, leading to the identification of six subunits of the flagellin gene (fla-1 to fla-4, flaA, and flaB)...

Sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) refers to the temporal coordination of an external stimulus with movement. Our previous work revealed that while SMS with visual flashing patterns was less consistent than with auditory or tactile patterns, it was still evident in a sample of nonmusicians. Although previous studies have speculated the potential role of auditory imagery, its contribution to visual SMS performance is not well quantified. Utilizing a synchronization-continuation finger-tapping task with a visual stimulus that included implied motion, we aimed to examine how participants' imagery ability, musicality, and rhythm perception affected SMS performance...

The well-known decrease in finger dexterity during healthy aging leads to a significant reduction in quality of life. Still, the exact patterns of altered finger kinematics of older adults in daily life are fairly unexplored. Finger interdependence is the unintentional co-movement of fingers that are not intended to move, and it is known to vary across the lifespan. Nevertheless, the magnitude and direction of age-related differences in finger interdependence are ambiguous across studies and tasks and have not been explored in the context of daily life finger movements...

Although Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 infection (SARS-CoV-2) is primarily recognized as a respiratory disease, mounting evidence suggests that it may lead to neurological and cognitive impairments. The current study used three eye-tracking tasks (free-viewing, fixation, and smooth pursuit) to assess the oculomotor functions of mild infected cases over six months with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infected volunteers. Fifty symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infected, and 24 self-reported healthy controls completed the eye-tracking tasks in an initial assessment...

BACKGROUND: As the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) is fundamentally clinical, the usefulness of ioflupane (123 I) single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) or DaTSCAN as a diagnostic tool has been a matter of debate for years. The performance of DaTSCAN is generally recommended in the follow-up of patients with a clinically uncertain diagnosis, especially in those with a suspected essential tremor, drug-induced parkinsonism, or vascular parkinsonism. However, there is a dearth of DaTSCAN findings regarding neurodegenerative parkinsonisms besides PD and atypical parkinsonisms...

Investigation of visual illusions helps us understand how we process visual information. For example, face pareidolia, the misperception of illusory faces in objects, could be used to understand how we process real faces. However, it remains unclear whether this illusion emerges from errors in face detection or from slower, cognitive processes. Here, our logic is straightforward; if examples of face pareidolia activate the mechanisms that rapidly detect faces in visual environments, then participants will look at objects more quickly when the objects also contain illusory faces...

Tasting food is the first step toward diversifying eating habits and studies with children have typically focused on their sensory education and willingness to try new foods. While very little is known about how children taste foods during everyday mealtimes, EMCA (ethnomethodological and conversation analytic) research on adult tasting in naturalistic settings has demonstrated regular organisational patterns. This paper brings these two research areas together, using the insights of EMCA research on adult tasting to inform our understanding of how young children taste food during preschool lunches...

BACKGROUND: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is common in Parkinson's disease (PD). We aimed to assess the incidence of MCI among patients with PD, carriers of mutations in LRRK2 and GBA1 genes, based on the movement disorder society (MDS) criteria for the diagnosis of MCI in early-stage PD. METHODS: Patients with PD were included if they scored ≤2 on the Hoehn and Yahr and ≤6 years since motor symptom onset. A group of age and gender matched healthy adults served as controls...

Point scanning retinal imaging modalities, including confocal scanning light ophthalmoscopy (cSLO) and optical coherence tomography, suffer from fixational motion artifacts. Fixation targets, though effective at reducing eye motion, are infeasible in some applications (e.g., handheld devices) due to their bulk and complexity. Here, we report on a cSLO device that scans the retina in a spiral pattern under pseudo-visible illumination, thus collecting image data while simultaneously projecting, into the subject's vision, the image of a bullseye, which acts as a virtual fixation target...

The application of pattern mining algorithms to extract movement patterns from sports big data can improve training specificity by facilitating a more granular evaluation of movement. Since movement patterns can only occur as consecutive, non-consecutive, or non-sequential, this study aimed to identify the best set of movement patterns for player movement profiling in professional rugby league and quantify the similarity among distinct movement patterns. Three pattern mining algorithms (l-length Closed Contiguous [LCCspm], Longest Common Subsequence [LCS] and AprioriClose) were used to extract patterns to profile elite rugby football league hookers (n = 22 players) and wingers (n = 28 players) match-games movements across 319 matches...

BACKGROUND: Numerous research studies have delved into the biomechanics of walking, focusing on the spine and lower extremities. However, understanding the symmetry of walking in individuals without health issues poses a challenge, as those with normal mobility may exhibit uneven movement patterns due to inherent functional differences between their left and right limbs. The goal of this study is to examine the three-dimensional kinematics of gait symmetry in the spine and lower body during both typical and brisk overground walking in healthy individuals...

BACKGROUND: Both sleep-related breathing disorders (SRBDs) and HIV infection can interfere with normal sleep architecture, and also cause physical and psychological distress. We aimed to understand the differences in the obstructive patterns, sleep architecture, physical and psychological distress when compared between people living with HIV (PLWH) and matched the severity of SRBDs controls. METHODS: A comparative study using matched case-control design was conducted...

Imagining the future, like recalling the past, relies on the ability to retrieve and imagine a spatial context. Research suggests that eye movements support this process by reactivating spatial contextual details from memory, a process termed gaze reinstatement. While gaze reinstatement has been linked to successful memory retrieval, it remains unclear whether it supports the related process of future simulation. In the present study, we recorded both eye movements and audio while participants described familiar locations from memory and subsequently imagined future events occurring in those locations while either freely moving their eyes or maintaining central fixation...

OBJECTIVE: The present clear aligner therapy (CAT) research focuses on isolating and reporting the biomechanical performance for three separate teeth, three translational movements and two flat trimlines at different heights. By identifying key patterns, the research seeks to inform the development of improved aligner designs, ultimately enhancing the effectiveness of clinical orthodontic treatments. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In an in vitro setting using the Orthodontic Force Simulator (OFS), the biomechanical response of 30 aligners was investigated on three different teeth of a straight symmetric maxillary dentition (central incisor, canine and first molar)...

Wildlife translocation and cross-species transmission can impede control and elimination of emerging zoonotic diseases. Tracking the geographic origin of both host and virus (i.e., translocation versus local infection) may help determine the most effective response when high-risk cases of emerging pathogens are identified in wildlife. In May 2022, a coyote (Canis latrans) infected with the raccoon (Procyon lotor) rabies virus variant (RRV) was collected in Lewis County, West Virginia, US, an area free from RRV...

Reliability of power supply for current implantable electronic devices is a critical issue for longevity and for reducing the risk of device failure. Energy harvesting is an emerging technology, representing a strategy for establishing autonomous power supply by utilizing biomechanical movements in our body. Here we present a novel "Twistron energy cell harvester" (TECH), consisting of coiled carbon nanotube yarn that converts mechanical energy of the beating heart into electrical energy. The performance of TECH was evaluated in an in vitro artificial heartbeat system which simulates the deformation pattern of the cardiac surface, reaching a maximum peak power of 1...

BACKGROUND: Adequate movement control and quality can be prerequisite functions for performance of the lower extremity. The purposes of our work were 1) to explore the agreement of an efficient test battery assessing qualitative movement execution and 2) to determine its consistency with quantitative performance tests from the corresponding movement pattern. METHODS: The participants were professional male association football players competing in the first German Bundesliga...

BACKGROUND: Movement and tone disorders in children and young adults with cerebral palsy are a great source of disability. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of basal ganglia targets has a major role in the treatment of isolated dystonias, but its efficacy in dyskinetic cerebral palsy (DCP) is lower, due to structural basal ganglia and thalamic damage and lack of improvement of comorbid choreoathetosis and spasticity. The cerebellum is an attractive target for DBS in DCP since it is frequently spared from hypoxic ischemic damage, it has a significant role in dystonia network models, and small studies have shown promise of dentate stimulation in improving CP-related movement and tone disorders...

Snow is a major, climate-sensitive feature of the Earth's surface and catalyst of fundamentally important ecosystem processes. Understanding how snow influences sentinel species in rapidly changing mountain ecosystems is particularly critical. Whereas effects of snow on food availability, energy expenditure, and predation are well documented, we report how avalanches exert major impacts on an ecologically significant mountain ungulate - the coastal Alaskan mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus). Using long-term GPS data and field observations across four populations (421 individuals over 17 years), we show that avalanches caused 23-65% of all mortality, depending on area...