2022 journal article

Age-Dependent Upper Limb Myoelectric Control Capability in Typically Developing Children

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL SYSTEMS AND REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, 30, 1009–1018.

By: M. Gonzalez *, H. Su n  & Q. Fu*

author keywords: Electromyography; Task analysis; Pediatrics; Electrodes; Protocols; Particle measurements; Neuromuscular; Myoelectric control; pattern recognition; motor development; upper limb; children
MeSH headings : Adult; Amputees; Artificial Limbs; Child; Electromyography / methods; Humans; Muscle Contraction; Upper Extremity
TL;DR: It is found that children had higher failure rates and slower average target acquisitions than adults did, primarily due to longer correction times that did not improve over repetitive practice, and the performance in both experiments was age-dependent in children. (via Semantic Scholar)
Source: Web Of Science
Added: May 10, 2022

Research in EMG-based control of prostheses has mainly utilized adult subjects who have fully developed neuromuscular control. Little is known about children’s ability to generate consistent EMG signals necessary to control artificial limbs with multiple degrees of freedom. As a first step to address this gap, experiments were designed to validate and benchmark two experimental protocols that quantify the ability to coordinate forearm muscle contractions in typically developing children. Non-disabled, healthy adults and children participated in our experiments that aimed to measure an individual’s ability to use myoelectric control interfaces. In the first experiment, participants performed 8 repetitions of 16 different hand/wrist movements. Using offline classification analysis based on Support Vector Machine, we quantified their ability to consistently produce distinguishable muscle contraction patterns. We demonstrated that children had a smaller number of highly independent movements (can be classified with >90% accuracy) than adults did. The second experiment measured participants’ ability to control the position of a cursor on a 1-DoF virtual slide using proportional EMG control with three different visuomotor gain levels. We found that children had higher failure rates and slower average target acquisitions than adults did, primarily due to longer correction times that did not improve over repetitive practice. We also found that the performance in both experiments was age-dependent in children. The results of this study provide novel insights into the technical and empirical basis to better understand neuromuscular development in children with upper-limb loss.