• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.117-126
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose an early rehabilitation training system for the improvement of postural balance with multi-modality on a tilting bed. The integration of the visual, somatosensory and vestibular functions is significant to for maintaining the postural control of the human body. However, conventional rehabilitation systems do not provide multi-modality to trainees. We analyzed the characterization of postural control at different tilt angles of an early rehabilitation training system, which consists of a tilting bed, a visual feedback, a computer interface, a computer, and a force plate. The software that we developed for the system consists of the training programs and the analysis programs. To evaluate the characterization of postural control, we conducted the first evaluation before the beginning of the training. In the following four weeks, 12 healthy young and 5 healthy elderly subjects were trained to improve postural control using the training programs with the tilting bed. After four weeks of training, we conducted the second evaluation. The analysis programs assess (center of pressure) COP moving time, COP maintaining time, and mean absolute deviation of the trace before and after training at different tilt angles on the bed. After 4 weeks, the COP moving time was reduced, the COP maintaining time was lengthened, and the mean absolute deviation of the trace was lowered through the repeated use of vertical, horizontal, dynamic circle movement training programs. These results show that this system improves postural balance and could be applied to clinical use as an effective training system.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.257-263
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• 2009

This study aimed to investigate whether selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) attenuate brain injury and facilitate recovery following photothrombotic cortical ischemia in mice. Male ICR mice were anesthetized and systemically administered Rose Bengal. Permanent focal ischemia was induced in the medial frontal and somatosensory cortices by irradiating the skull with cold light laser. The animals were treated with fluoxetine or sertraline once a day for 14 d starting 1 h after ischemic insult. Treatment with fluoxetine and sertraline significantly reduced the infarct size. The Evans blue extravasation indices of the fluoxetine- and sertraline-treated groups were significantly lower than that of the vehicle group. Treatment with fluoxetine and sertraline shifted the lower limit of the mean arterial blood pressure for cerebral blood flow autoregulation toward normal, and significantly increased the expression of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and hypoxia-inducible factor-1 ${\alpha}$ (HIF-1 ${\alpha}$) proteins in the ischemic region. These results suggest that SSRIs, such as fluoxetine and sertraline, facilitate recovery following photothrombotic cortical ischemia via enhancement of HO-1 and HIF-1 ${\alpha}$ proteins expression, thereby providing a benefit in therapy of cerebral ischemia.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.61-73
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in the center of pressure (COP), ground reaction force (GRF) and joint angles of elderly people and young people while stair-descent. The participants in this experiment were 5 elderly people and 5 young people, each of which was asked to descend stairs of three different heights (8 cm, 16 cm, and 32 cm). As they climbed down the stairs, they received vibration stimulation on the lower limb. The change of COP, GRF and joint angles were analyzed during the standing phase. COP decreased as the Achilles tendon and tibialis anterior tendon were vibrated. Vertical GRF increased as the Achilles tendon was vibrated, and the joint angle differed according to vibration stimulation conditions. These results mean that ankle joint, knee joint and hip joint were influenced by the vibrations on the lower limb as the participants descended the stairs. It was concluded that the vibration stimulation on the lower limb allowed the participants to efficiently climb down the stairs.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.636-646
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• 2007

Adequate postural control depends on the spatial and temporal integration of vestibular, visual, and somatosensory information. Especially, the musculoskeletal function is essential to maintain the postural control. The experimental studies was performed on the muscular activities in the lower extremities during maintaining and moving exercises on an unstable platform with Magneto Rheological(MR) dampers. The unstable platform of the developed system was controlled by electric currents to the MR dampers. A subject executed the maintaining and moving exercises which are presented through the display monitor. The electromyographies of the eight muscles in lower extremities were recorded and analyzed in the time and the frequency domain: the muscles of interest were rectus femoris(RF), biceps femoris(BF), tensor fasciae latae(TFL), vastus lateralis(VL), vastus medialis(VM), gastrocnemius(Ga), tibialis anterior(TA), Soleus(So). The experimental results showed that the muscular activities differed in the four moving exercises and the nine maintaining exercises. For the anterior-posterior pattern, the TA showed highest activities; for the left-right pattern, the TFL; for the 45, $-45^{\circ}$ pattern, the TFL and TA. Also, the rate of the increase in the muscular activities were affected by the condition of the unstable platform with MR dampers for the maintaining and moving exercises. The experimental results suggest that the choice of different maintaining and moving exercises could selectively train different muscles in various intensity. Futhermore, the findings suggested that the training using this system can improve the ability of postural control.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.618-627
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• 2007

As our society progresses rapidly toward an aged society, there is a stiff increase in the population of the aged persons who have difficulties in adjusting themselves to environments due to declines of their physical functions. Therefore, there is a great need for the concept of 'Universal Design' that demands the design of overall social structure to care for the elderly. Due to this reason, the physical function of the aged persons should thoroughly be studied for the development of rehabilitation and training equipments to help the recovery of physical functions of the elderly. Among the variety of physical functions of the elderly, visual functions, motion characteristics, hearing functions, and somatosensory functions have significant influence toward everyday lives and are physical functions to study for the construction of urgently needed physical function databases of the elderly. This study concentrates on visual functions among the variety of physical functions of the elderly. To measure various visual functions of the elderly, a measurement room for the elderly has been developed, which can mimic everyday lives and perform measurements of visual functions with subjects in seated position. The measurement items for the construction of the database were capabilities in everyday vision according to changes in arrangement of colors and light intensity and capabilities in everyday vision, color distinction, dark adaptation, and light glare against changes in contrast.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.57-61
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of direction (pitch and roll) on the perception of support surface rotation while standing. Thirty young healthy subjects participated in this study. Support surface was rotated at an unexpected instant in a very slow speed (0.2 deg/s). The direction of support surface rotation was randomly chosen among pitch (forward and backward) and roll (right and left) directions. The experiment was performed with eyes open and closed. Perception performance was evaluated by the perception threshold, defined as the rotation angle of the surface at the instant when a subject recognized that the support surface was moving. Results showed that the perception threshold was smaller for roll directions than pitch directions irrespective of vision and gender (p < 0.01). This indicates that the perception of support surface rotation is more sensitive in roll direction than in pitch direction. Among three sensory functions related to postural perception, the effect of vestibular and visual functions on the direction difference of the perception should be little because of the very slow surface rotation and independence on visual conditions. Therefore, the direction dependence of perception would have been affected mainly by the somatosensory function.

• Korean Journal of Applied Biomechanics
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.7-16
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• 2020

Objective: It is to find factors related to stability through analysis of plantar pressure factors according to the level of instability when performing Snatch. Method: Foot pressure analysis was performed while 10 weightlifters performed 80% of the highest level of Snatch, and motion was classified and analyzed in 3 grades according to the level of instability. Results: First, in Bad Motion, the movement distance of the pressure center in the direction of ML and AP was larger significantly in Phase 2. Second, in Phase 2, the number of zero-crossing in the AP direction was larger statistically significantly in Good Motion. Third, in the bad motion in Phase 3, the number of zero-crossing in the ML direction showed a significantly larger value. Fourth, in Phase 4, it was found that the more stable the lock out motion, the greater the activity of foot controlling in the left and right directions. Fifth, Phase 3, the greater the Maximum/Mean foot pressure value, the more stable the pulling action. Sixth, in Phase 2, the foot pressure was concentrated with a wide distribution in the midfoot and rearfoot. Seventh, the triggering number of the forefoot region was small in the last pull phase. Eighth, the number of triggers in the toe area was significantly higher during Good Motion in Phase 4. Conclusion: Summarizing the factors of instability in Snatch, there was no significant difference in Phase 1 for each condition. In order to enhance the stability in Phase 2, the sensory control ability in the AP direction is required, and focusing the foot pressing motion with a wide distribution in the middle and rear parts increases the instability. In Phase 3, it was found that the more unstable, the more sensory control activity was performed in the ML direction, the stronger the forefoot pressing action should be performed for a stable Snatch. In Phase 4, It is important that the feet sensory control activity in ML directions and the control ability of the toes in order to have stable Lock out motion.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.129-140
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• 2017

In this paper, a $4{\times}32$-channel neural recording system capable of acquiring neural signals is introduced. Four 32-channel neural recording ICs, complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), a micro controller unit (MCU) with USB interface, and a PC are used. Each neural recording IC, implemented in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS technology, includes 32 channels of analog front-ends (AFEs), a 32-to-1 analog multiplexer, and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The mid-band gain of the AFE is adjustable in four steps, and have a tunable bandwidth. The AFE has a mid-band gain of 54.5 dB to 65.7 dB and a bandwidth of 35.3 Hz to 5.8 kHz. The high-pass cutoff frequency of the AFE varies from 18.6 Hz to 154.7 Hz. The input-referred noise (IRN) of the AFE is $10.2{\mu}V_{rms}$. A high-resolution, low-power ADC with a high conversion speed achieves a signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of 50.63 dB and a spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 63.88 dB, at a sampling-rate of 2.5 MS/s. The effectiveness of our neural recording system is validated in in-vivo recording of the primary somatosensory cortex of a rat.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.482-485
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• 2016

In this work, a transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS) experiment on animals is performed to stimulate the brain cortex of the mouse using modulated signals. The proposed TMS system is composed of the inverter, transformer, capacitor, variable inductor, and stimulation coil to generate 1.5 mT magnetic field in the brain cortex of the mouse. The stimulation signal is modulated to square wave where the carrier frequency is swept from 85 to 91 kHz to investigate the stimulation effect. The experimental result shows that when the carrier frequency of the stimulation signal is lower than 89 kHz, the reaction of the mouse does not change while the stimulation signal which has the carrier frequency higher than 89 kHz results in decreasing the threshold of the stimulus for the pressure.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.56-60
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• 2016

Body physical technique is to pursuit the dynamic motion by the physical index(PI) and sensory index(SI) on the physical body function. Function of the physical body by the motor condition is organized the dynamic physical system. For the physical motion of signal, we is defined a runout value of the body function by the physical index on the dynamic state. The concept of body physical index was identified the reference of physical index and sensory index by the body technique. As to detect a variation of the body physical technique-runout physical index(BPT-RPI) of the maximum and average and minimum in terms of physical motion, and the dynamic sensory value that was a runout function of the vision variation of the $Vi-{\xi}_{MAX-AVG-MIN}$ with $2.53{\pm}4.85$ units, that was a runout function of the vestibular variation of the $Ve-{\xi}_{MAX-AVG-MIN}$ with ($-0.69{\pm}2.32$)units, that was a runout function of the somatosensory variation of the $So-{\xi}_{MAX-AVG-MIN}$ with ($-1.43{\pm}-1.36$) units. The dynamic physical motion will be to confirm at the variable function of the runout motion for the body function values of dynamic physical index on the BPT-RPI that was identified an evaluation of the physical sensory function by the dynamic physical system. Runout body system was mentioned of a physical body situation by the mild moving and was refer a runout data of dynamic physical nervous index.