TY - JOUR
T1 - Brain Functional Connectivity in Unconstrained Walking with and without an Exoskeleton
AU - Li, Junhua
AU - Thakor, Nitish
AU - Bezerianos, Anastasios
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 17, 2019; revised December 31, 2019; accepted January 23, 2020. Date of publication January 28, 2020; date of current version March 6, 2020. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61806149. (Corresponding author: Junhua Li.) Junhua Li is with the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, U.K., also with the Laboratory for Brain-Bionic Intelligence and Computational Neuroscience, Wuyi University, Jiangmen 529020, China, and also with the Centre for Multidisciplinary Convergence Computing, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China (e-mail: juhalee.bcmi@gmail.com).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2001-2011 IEEE.
PY - 2020/3
Y1 - 2020/3
N2 - An exoskeleton is utilized to effectively restore the motor function of amputees' limbs and is frequently employed in motor rehabilitation training during convalescence. Understanding of exoskeleton impact on the brain is required in order to better and more efficiently use the exoskeleton. Almost all previous studies investigated the exoskeleton effect on the brain in a situation with constraints such as predefined walking speed, which could lead to findings differed from that obtained in an unconstrained situation. We, therefore, performed an experiment of unconstrained walking with and without an exoskeleton. Both individual connections and graph metrics were explored and compared among walking conditions. We found that low-order functional connections and associated high-order functional connections mainly between the left centroparietal region and right frontal region were significantly different among walking conditions. Generally speaking, connective strength was enhanced in LOFC and was decreased in aHOFC when assistant force was provided by the exoskeleton. Further, we proposed connection length investigation and revealed the large majority of these connections were long-distance connectivity. Graph metric investigation discovered higher connectivity clustering in the walking with low exoskeleton-aided force compared to the walking without the exoskeleton. This study expanded the existing knowledge of the effect of exoskeleton on the brain and is of implications on new exoskeleton development and exoskeleton-aided rehabilitation training.
AB - An exoskeleton is utilized to effectively restore the motor function of amputees' limbs and is frequently employed in motor rehabilitation training during convalescence. Understanding of exoskeleton impact on the brain is required in order to better and more efficiently use the exoskeleton. Almost all previous studies investigated the exoskeleton effect on the brain in a situation with constraints such as predefined walking speed, which could lead to findings differed from that obtained in an unconstrained situation. We, therefore, performed an experiment of unconstrained walking with and without an exoskeleton. Both individual connections and graph metrics were explored and compared among walking conditions. We found that low-order functional connections and associated high-order functional connections mainly between the left centroparietal region and right frontal region were significantly different among walking conditions. Generally speaking, connective strength was enhanced in LOFC and was decreased in aHOFC when assistant force was provided by the exoskeleton. Further, we proposed connection length investigation and revealed the large majority of these connections were long-distance connectivity. Graph metric investigation discovered higher connectivity clustering in the walking with low exoskeleton-aided force compared to the walking without the exoskeleton. This study expanded the existing knowledge of the effect of exoskeleton on the brain and is of implications on new exoskeleton development and exoskeleton-aided rehabilitation training.
KW - (associated) high-order functional connectivity
KW - EEG
KW - Low-order functional connectivity
KW - exoskeleton
KW - graph metric
KW - unconstrained walking
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U2 - 10.1109/TNSRE.2020.2970015
DO - 10.1109/TNSRE.2020.2970015
M3 - Article
C2 - 32011259
AN - SCOPUS:85081937015
SN - 1534-4320
VL - 28
SP - 730
EP - 739
JO - IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
IS - 3
M1 - 8972473
ER -