The robot used during data collection of my project
For those who have been following along this was week 4 of my internship here in Kentucky. This week I was able to finally finish going over the wavelength frequencies of lil of my dats and I think it would be perfectly happy if I didn’t have to look at one for a while. This week I was able to witness the making of some of the data I’ve been analyzing. We saw a women come in for her first session. This women from my understanding was completely paralyzed from the waist down. In this first session we attached sensors to her legs to sense the movement caused by the electricity sent to the electrodes previously implanted in her legs. After about 40 minutes of stimulation she was able to figure out that post electric pulse when she would inhale her legs would become movable. She was able to lift her leg up to her chest and back down. The movements weren’t super controlled but they were voluntary and considering the alternative was no movement this was huge progress. I thought it was pretty amazing but apparently this was typical. Not that it wasn’t huge but to my understanding Enrico my boss spends his days giving movement back to paralyzed individuals which I thought was kind of impossible.
It was interesting to see what the data looks like on actual person. Without sensors one would imagine that all of the muscles were being used however considering every injury is different and the patient was on her back some muscles may have been compensating for a loss of function but they were all still working hard.
As you can see in the image if you’re able to zoom in the amplitude is extremely high for reference a baseline frequency is around 30 hertz. The difference is that even if they aren’t able to fully engage the muscle they’re still have to squeeze really hard for any sort of movement. In paralyzed individuals even thought we able to get full mobility the action itself takes less effort and even of we engage all muscles the fact that we do it so easily means our muscle movements have lower amplitude, around 200 hertz for full movement.
In addition to science I also made dinner for my family this week which passed all but the six year old test due to the presence of arugula an understandably acquired taste for many but not yet little six year old Angus. Below is an arugula peach burrata salad with a balsamic olive oil dressing.
Other than cooking I’ve spent so much of my life wanting to learn how to dive properly to that every one doesn’t end in a painful belly flop. Fortunately my host family happens to be full of competitive swimmers and a diving instructor so after learning how to dive their nine year old held me hostage on the high dive until I dove off. Something about jumping down head first for 10 ft doesn’t really sit right with me and caused some mental blocks.
But either way it was definitely really fun!!!
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