Developmental Neurorehabilitation最新文献

Inclusive postsecondary education (IPSE) programs support adults with intellectual disabilities' participation in higher education. Students in IPSE programs may have limited knowledge of sexuality, relationships, and social skills, which can be addressed through sexuality and relationship education (SRE). This project evaluated the effect of the Positive Choices© curriculum on the SRE knowledge of 7 students attending an IPSE program in the southeastern United States. Students attended 15 weekly classes taught by two graduate assistants and faculty supervisor during spring 2020; half of course meetings occurred in person and half via Zoom due to COVID-19 restrictions. The authors analyzed results of pre-post one sample t-test of student scores on five instructor-created assessments. All students showed statistically significant increases in knowledge for each assessment and overall. Future research should assess the effect of other curricula in use in IPSE programs and evaluate the need for and use of supplemental materials for instruction.

Virtual reality (VR), coupled with motion tracking, can investigate walking in a controlled setting while applying various walking challenges. The purpose of this review was to summarize the evidence on consequences of VR on biomechanical gait parameters in children with cerebral palsy. MEDLINE, Embase and Web of Science were searched. Among 7.574 studies, screened by two independent reviewers, seven studies were included, analyzing treadmill (n = 6) or overground walking (n = 1) under VR. Most frequently reported were the spatiotemporal parameters walking speed, stride length, step width, stance phase, and the kinematic parameters range of knee flexion and peak ankle dorsiflexion. However, methodological approaches and reporting of the results were inconsistent among studies. This review reveals that VR can complement information gained from clinical gait analysis. However, this is still an emerging field of research and there is limited knowledge on the effect of VR on gait parameters, notably during overground walking.

Ischemic heart disease or stroke caused by the rupture or dislodgement of a carotid plaque poses a huge risk to human health. To obtain accurate information on the carotid plaque characteristics of patients and to assist clinicians in the determination and identification of atherosclerotic areas, which is one significant foundation work. Existing work in this field has not deliberately extracted texture information of carotid from the ultrasound images. However, texture information is a very important part of carotid ultrasound images. To make full use of the texture information in carotid ultrasound images, a novel network based on U-Net called Contrast U-Net is designed in this paper. First, the proposed network mainly relies on a contrast block to extract accurate texture information. Moreover, to make the network better learn the texture information of each channel, the squeeze-and-excitation block is introduced to assist in the jump connection from encoding to decoding. Experimental results from intravascular ultrasound image datasets show that the proposed network can achieve superior performance compared with other popular models in carotid plaque detection.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a movement disorder and majority of children with CP have communication impairments which impact participation with this population. Rapid Syllable Transition Treatment (ReST) is a motor speech intervention primarily for children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). A recent pilot study in which ReST was trialed with children with CP showed improved speech performance. Therefore, a single blind randomized controlled trial to compare ReST to usual care with 14 children with moderate-to-severe CP and dysarthria was conducted. ReST was provided on telehealth. ANCOVA with 95% confidence intervals indicated significant group differences in favor of ReST in speech accuracy (F = 5.1, p = .001), intelligibility (F = 2.8, p = .02) and communicative participation on both the FOCUS (F = 2, p = .02) and Intelligibility in Context Scale (F = 2.4, p = .04). ReST was found to be more effective than usual care.

Purpose: To investigate the effects of dual task (DT) balance exercises on functional status, balance, and DT performance in children with Down Syndrome (DS).

Methods: Participants were divided into two groups: intervention group (IG; n = 13) and control group (CG;n = 14). WeeFIM was used to measure the functional independence level and balance was evaluated using the Pediatric Balance Scale. DT performance was assessed using Timed Up and Go, Single Leg Stance, Tandem-Stance and 30 s Sit to Stand tests without concomitant task, with motor task or cognitive task. The IG received 16 sessions of DT training twice a week for 8 weeks.

Results: Functional level, balance, and DT performance improved significantly in the IG, whereas only balance improved in the CG. Significantly better results were achieved in the IG, as demonstrated by greater pre/post-treatment changes.

Conclusion: DT balance exercises improved functional level, balance and DT performance of children with DS.

Objective: Compare the effectiveness of active and sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) during the training of a dual task in children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP).

Methods: Thirty children with CP were submitted to ten sessions of either active (n = 15) or sham (n = 15) tDCS over the motor cortex for 20 minutes during the training of a dual task. Pre-intervention, post-intervention and follow-up evaluations involved measures of functional performance, intellectual performance, functional mobility and cortical excitability.

Results: The combination of active tDCS and dual task training led to improvements in functional mobility as well as functional and intellectual performances one month after the end of the intervention.

Conclusion: The combination of active tDCS and dual task training demonstrated promising effects for children with spastic CP.

This observational study aims to describe the level of perceived disability in Cerebral Palsy (CP). We described the perception of adults by using the interviewer-administered version of the WHO disability assessment schedule (WHODAS 2.0). In case of intellectual disability (ID), the proxy-administered version was used, and a caregiver was asked to report the difficulties experienced by the patient; 199 patients were enrolled. The level of perceived disability was higher when referred to patients with ID (proxy report) than when referred to patients without ID (p < .001). For all patients, the level of perceived disability varied depending on the severity and the localization of motor impairment (both p < .001). No differences were observed based on the type of motor impairment. The perceived disability was correlated with age only for patients with no ID (p < .05). The WHODAS 2.0 may be a useful tool to explore the perception of disability in CP.