• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.129-134
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• 2013

The essential tremor is an involuntary oscillatory movement of body parts. Conventional treatments of essential tremor have little effects in some patients and also leads to significant side effects. Alternative to these treatments, sensory stimulation may have beneficial effects on the essential tremor. The purpose of this study was to analyze an effect of sensory stimulation on essential tremor. Ten patients with essential tremor ($67.4{\pm}8.82$ yrs, 5 men and 5 women) participated in this study. Three-axis gyro sensors were attached on index finger, hand and forearm of patients. Task of 'arms outstretched forward' was performed with and without sensory stimulation. Vectorsum of three dimensional angular velocities (pitch, roll, yaw) was calculated. Outcome measures included root-meansquare (RMS) mean of the vector-sum amplitude, total power, peak power and peak frequency. RMS amplitude, total power and peak power were reduced by sensory stimulation (p < 0.05). Peak frequency was not affected by sensory stimulation. The results indicate that the sensory stimulation is useful to suppress the essential tremor.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2016

Essential tremor is a neurological disorder with a tremor of the arms and hands. It is well known that essential tremor is characterized by the postural tremor and the action tremor. There has been no report on the quantitative difference in the characteristics of two tremor types. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible difference in tremor characteristics of postural and action tremors. Seventeen patients with essential tremor ($68.9{\pm}7.9years$, 7 men, 10 women) participated in this study. Patients performed the tasks of postural maintenance (arms outstretched) and daily actions (spiral drawing). Three-axes (pitch, roll and yaw) gyro sensors were attached on index finger, back of hand and forearm, from which the segment and the joint angular velocities were calculated. Outcome measure was the tremor amplitude defined as the root-mean-square mean of the vector-sum angular velocity at segments and joints. Two-way ANOVA showed that task and joint had main factor on the tremor amplitude (p < 0.05). Post-hoc analysis revealed that tremor amplitude at the metacarpo-phalangeal joint was not affected by task (p > 0.05). However, tremor amplitude at the wrist joint differed among the tasks (p < 0.05), and it was greater in the action tasks than in postural task. Tremor was greater at finger segments than at hand and forearm and it increased in action tasks. The results of this study would be helpful for the understanding and task-specific treatments of the essential tremor.