Activity informed electrical muscle stimulation for rehabilitation: a feasibility study (360G-Wellcome-211971_Z_18_Z)

Evidence suggests that electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) can evoke sensory feedback to the central neural system and create adequate functional muscle activation and force perception by notational motor commands generated within the CNS. Despite being widely explored, the mechanisms of force perception and generation remain subject of controversy, which hinders EMS application for recovery of everyday life functions in post-stroke survivors. This study aims to identify the feasibility of using EMS to evoke adequate judgments of force and heaviness during weight holding. Ten healthy adults will perform a 2-stage trial. First, the activation patterns of 8 major upper-limb muscles and the elbow and wrist joint angles during holding for 30s randomly presented 5 objects of similar size and shape but different weight will be recorded using surface electromyography and 2D electrogoniometry, respectively. Time-amplitude and cross-correlation analyses will establish weight- and joint-angle dependencies of muscle activation and inform the EMS program design. Then, the task will be completed without visual feedback by holding the object or replacing it with the respective EMS. Perceived comfort and similarity between the tasks will be tested following an adapted protocol for determining the running speed preference. Data reliability will be evaluated by repeating the trial.