movement control
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2022 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sayed Manzoor Ahmed Hanifi ◽  
Nujhat Jahan ◽  
Nazia Sultana ◽  
Sharif-Al Hasan ◽  
Ashish Paul ◽  
...  

The Government of Bangladesh imposed a movement control order as a mass quarantine strategy to control the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Adherence to the home quarantine may put children at risk by missing routine vaccination. In this study, we investigated the impact of COVID-19 on child routine immunization in a rural area of Bangladesh and consider the broader implications. Data for this study comes from the Chakaria Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) of icddr,b with a population of 90,000 people residing in 16,000 households in 49 villages in a rural, coastal area of Southeast Bangladesh. We used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design which involved two phases between March 1, 2020, and May 31, 2020: first, we observed 258 outreach sessions of 86 EPI centers. We calculated the number of Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) outreach sessions suspended and the number of children who missed their routine vaccination due to the COVID-19. We extrapolated the number of Bangladeshi children who missed their routine vaccination using Chakaria HDSS observations. Secondly, we conducted in-depth interviews to explain the quantitative results. The EPI outreach session (EOS) declined to 74.42% (95% CI 63.97–83.22), 10.45% (95% CI 5.00–18.94), and 3.45% (95% CI 1.00–9.75) from 2019 levels in March, April, and May 2020, respectively. By extrapolation, in Bangladesh, between March and May 2020, 3.2 million children missed their scheduled vaccination compared to 2019. Results from in-depth interviews showed that the unwillingness of villagers to hold EOS and the absenteeism of the vaccinators due to social distancing recommendations and lack of personal safety measures were the main reasons for the discontinuation of the EOS. Resuming EPI outreach sessions and introducing a special catch-up program is essential to prevent future outbreaks and deaths due to vaccine-preventable diseases in Bangladesh and the countries where children missed their routine vaccination due to COVID-19. This health system failure should be considered a factor in all future pandemic preparedness plans.


eLife ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Ariani ◽  
J Andrew Pruszynski ◽  
Jörn Diedrichsen

Motor planning plays a critical role in producing fast and accurate movement. Yet, the neural processes that occur in human primary motor and somatosensory cortex during planning, and how they relate to those during movement execution, remain poorly understood. Here we used 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a delayed movement paradigm to study single finger movement planning and execution. The inclusion of no-go trials and variable delays allowed us to separate what are typically overlapping planning and execution brain responses. Although our univariate results show widespread deactivation during finger planning, multivariate pattern analysis revealed finger-specific activity patterns in contralateral primary somatosensory cortex (S1), which predicted the planned finger action. Surprisingly, these activity patterns were as informative as those found in contralateral primary motor cortex (M1). Control analyses ruled out the possibility that the detected information was an artifact of subthreshold movements during the preparatory delay. Furthermore, we observed that finger-specific activity patterns during planning were highly correlated to those during execution. These findings reveal that motor planning activates the specific S1 and M1 circuits that are engaged during the execution of a finger press, while activity in both regions is overall suppressed. We propose that preparatory states in S1 may improve movement control through changes in sensory processing or via direct influence of spinal motor neurons.


Author(s):  
Takuya Morishita ◽  
Jan E. Timmermann ◽  
Robert Schulz ◽  
Friedhelm C. Hummel

AbstractInterhemispheric interactions demonstrate a crucial role for directing bimanual movement control. In humans, a well-established paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation paradigm enables to assess these interactions by means of interhemispheric inhibition (IHI). Previous studies have examined changes in IHI from the active to the resting primary motor cortex during unilateral muscle contractions; however, behavioral relevance of such changes is still inconclusive. In the present study, we evaluated two bimanual tasks, i.e., mirror activity and bimanual anti-phase tapping, to examine behavioral relevance of IHI for bimanual movement control within this behavioral framework. Two age groups (young and older) were evaluated as bimanual movement control demonstrates evident behavioral decline in older adults. Two types of IHI with differential underlying mechanisms were measured; IHI was tested at rest and during a motor task from the active to the resting primary motor cortex. Results demonstrate an association between behavior and short-latency IHI in the young group: larger short-latency IHI correlated with better bimanual movement control (i.e., less mirror activity and better bimanual anti-phase tapping). These results support the view that short-latency IHI represents a neurophysiological marker for the ability to suppress activity of the contralateral side, likely contributing to efficient bimanual movement control. This association was not observed in the older group, suggesting age-related functional changes of IHI. To determine underlying mechanisms of impaired bimanual movement control due to neurological disorders, it is crucial to have an in-depth understanding of age-related mechanisms to disentangle disorder-related mechanisms of impaired bimanual movement control from age-related ones.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anke Cajar ◽  
Ralf Engbert ◽  
Jochen Laubrock

The availability of large eye-movement corpora has become increasingly important over the past years. In scene viewing, scan-path analyses of time-ordered fixations, for example, allow for investigating individual differences in spatial correlations between fixation locations, or for predicting individual viewing behavior in the context of computational models. However, time-dependent analyses require many fixations per scene, and only few large eye-movement corpora are publicly available. This manuscript presents a new corpus with eye-movement data from two hundred participants. Viewers memorized or searched either color or grayscale scenes while high or low spatial frequencies were filtered in central or peripheral vision. Our database provides the scenes from the experiment with corresponding object annotations, preprocessed eye-movement data, and heatmaps and fixation clusters based on empirical fixation locations. Besides time-dependent analyses, the corpus data allow for investigating questions that have received little attention in scene-viewing research so far: (i) eye-movement behavior under different task instructions, (ii) the importance of color and spatial frequencies when performing these tasks, and (iii) the individual roles and interaction of central and peripheral vision during scene viewing. Furthermore, the corpus allows for validation of computational models of attention and eye-movement control, and finally, analyses on an object- or cluster-based level.


2022 ◽  
Vol 2022 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Xin Liu ◽  
Bin Zheng ◽  
Qinwei Guo ◽  
Yuanyuan Yu ◽  
Zhongshi Zhang ◽  
...  

Introduction. We evaluated the velocity profiles of patients with lateral collateral ligament (LCL) injuries of the ankle with a goal of understanding the control mechanism involved in walking. Methods. We tracked motions of patients’ legs and feet in 30 gait cycles recorded from patients with LCL injuries of the ankle and compared them to 50 gait cycles taken from normal control subjects. Seventeen markers were placed on the foot following the Heidelberg foot measurement model. Velocity profiles and microadjustments of the knee, ankle, and foot were calculated during different gait phases and compared between the patient and control groups. Results. Patients had a smaller first rocker percentage and larger second rocker percentage in the gait cycle compared to controls. Patients also displayed shorter stride length and slower strides and performed more microadjustments in the second rocker phase than in other rocker/swing phases. Patients’ mean velocities of the knee, ankle, and foot in the second rocker phase were also significantly higher than that in control subjects. Discussion. Evidence from velocity profiles suggested that patients with ligament injury necessitated more musculoskeletal microadjustments to maintain body balance, but these may also be due to secondary injury. Precise descriptions of the spatiotemporal gait characteristics are therefore crucial for our understanding of movement control during locomotion.


2022 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-158
Author(s):  
Richard A. Andersen ◽  
Tyson Aflalo ◽  
Luke Bashford ◽  
David Bjånes ◽  
Spencer Kellis

Traditional brain–machine interfaces decode cortical motor commands to control external devices. These commands are the product of higher-level cognitive processes, occurring across a network of brain areas, that integrate sensory information, plan upcoming motor actions, and monitor ongoing movements. We review cognitive signals recently discovered in the human posterior parietal cortex during neuroprosthetic clinical trials. These signals are consistent with small regions of cortex having a diverse role in cognitive aspects of movement control and body monitoring, including sensorimotor integration, planning, trajectory representation, somatosensation, action semantics, learning, and decision making. These variables are encoded within the same population of cells using structured representations that bind related sensory and motor variables, an architecture termed partially mixed selectivity. Diverse cognitive signals provide complementary information to traditional motor commands to enable more natural and intuitive control of external devices.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aida Kalok ◽  
Syarifah Aminah Syed Anwar Aly ◽  
Rahana Abdul Rahman ◽  
Zaleha Abdullah Mahdy ◽  
Shalisah Sharip

Background: COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in nationwide lockdown as a disease control measure. Potential harm to self and baby due to COVID-19 infection as well as uncertainties about delivery are among contributors to maternal anxiety. We aimed to assess the prevalence of psychological distress among pregnant women during the Malaysian Movement Control Order (MCO).Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between May and June 2020 in a teaching hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A self-administered electronic questionnaire was distributed which included the following; (1) Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS 21), (2) Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS), (3) MCO effect questionnaire, and (4) newly designed COVID-19 pregnancy-related anxiety. Chi-square test and logistic regression were performed to determine significant associations whilst mean scores comparison were conducted through Mann-Whitney-U-test.Results: Four hundred and fifteen women were included in the final analysis. The prevalence of psychological distress among our cohort was 14.7%; with a two-fold increase of risk among the non-Malays (AOR 1.98, 95% CI 1.00–3.89) whilst a greater number of social support showed a protective effect (AOR 0.51, 95%CI 0.28–0.92). Malay ethnicity (p < 0.001) alongside greater household income (p = 0.014) were positive predictors of a higher sense of maternal wellbeing. Multiparous women and those of higher economic status experienced the more negative effect of the MCO. Around 88% of our women reported a higher level of COVID-19 pregnancy-related anxiety. Younger (p = 0.017) and first-time mothers (p = 0.039) were more likely to be anxious. Although adequate maternal knowledge on COVID-19 was associated with a greater sense of maternal wellbeing (p = 0.028), it was also linked to a higher level of COVID-19 related anxiety (AOR 3.54, 95% 1.29–9.70).Conclusion: There was a relatively low prevalence of psychological distress among expectant mothers in Malaysia during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Expectant mothers should receive accurate and reliable information on the effect of COVID-19 on pregnancy to relieve some maternal anxiety. Maternal health screening is important to identify individuals who would benefit from extra support and mental health intervention, especially in prolonged lockdown.


Author(s):  
NURUL AZWANI I MOHD IDRIK ◽  
TAN BEE PIANG

The Covid-19 pandemic phenomenon has unfolded in Malaysia since 2020, it has brought far-reaching changes to all aspects of society includes education. Due to the Movement Control Order (PKP), educational institutions in Malaysia were ordered to close, student started fully learning online from home. This situation has become a challenge to the implementation of the 21st Century learning approach inteaching. As this fully online teaching and learning are happening for the first time in Malaysian education, this study aims to explore the challenges faced by Malaysian Moral Education teachers on the implementation of the 21st Century skill in an online classroom. This study uses a qualitative method by interviewing 5 Moral Education teachers as respondents. The findings of this study show that the change of online teaching and learning has caused unexpected challenges to Moral Education teachers, the traditional teaching techniques which have been applied in face-to-face classrooms are not effective when moving to online teaching and learning. To achieve the objectives of Moral Education which involve aspects of cognition, feeling, and action, the factors of internet access at home, cooperation from the parents, and the teacher’s skill of using technology need to be considered.


2022 ◽  
pp. 280-308
Author(s):  
Chin Chin Sia

The right to legal advice is an essential entitlement and an imperative step toward effective enjoyment of other fundamental rights, especially to the communities which have limited access to legal opinions due to scarce financial means. Global communities are adversely affected, particularly in relation to employment, domestic violence, and financial hardships during this pandemic. This pro-bono virtual legal clinics project is instrumental in enhancing social impact by ensuring that communities continuously have better access to quality legal advice and information during the COVID-19 Movement Control Order through multiple social networking tools and meaningful collaborations with NGOs.


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