Vibratory manipulation is any mode of manipulation involving repeated impacts due to a striker which follows some periodic motion. In this paper, we study vibratory manipulation in the context of tapping planar objects which slide on a fixed support surface. We are interested in the behaviors an object exhibits under such excitation. There are two distinct types of tapping that can result: cont...

Women with spinal cord injuries (SCIs) have predictable alterations in sexual responses. They commonly have a decreased ability to achieve genital sexual arousal. This study determined whether the use of vibratory stimulation would result in increased genital arousal as measured by vaginal pulse amplitude in women with SCIs. Subjects included 46 women with SCIs and 11 nondisabled control subjec...

1. Tonic activation of muscular activity was observed during forced vibration of the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles in the decerebrate cat. Such tonic activity was not observed in the tibialis anterior muscle. 2. Intervals of both unitary EMG and motoneuronal spikes were shown to occur according to the principle of integer multiplication of vibratory cyclic time. 3. Gradual recruitment of ton...

In the present study 366 patients suffering acute or chronic musculoskeletal pain of different origin were given vibratory stimulation for the pain. Many of the patients had previously had treatments of various kinds without satisfactory relief. The effect of vibratory stimulation was assessed during and after stimulation using a graphic rating scale. Sixty-nine per cent of the patients reporte...

BACKGROUND Bone, soft-tissue, and nerve deficits of the weightbearing surface of the foot are frequent sequelae from foot trauma or diabetes mellitus and present challenging treatment issues. Injury to the specialized, shock-absorbing, heel-pad tissue containing spirally arranged fat chambers is particularly difficult to manage. Appropriate footwear modifications and shoe inserts for protection...

PURPOSE To evaluate any correlation between various foot angles and their respective American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) scores for pain, and the effectiveness of a medial arch orthosis. METHODS 81 children with bilateral symptomatic flatfoot were randomised into orthosis (n=55) and control (n=26) groups. The orthosis group consisted of 33 male and 22 female patients aged 36 t...

To investigate the influence of the cervical input to the equilibrium, the effect of neck vibratory stimulation on body sway was analyzed in 49 normal human subjects. Body perturbations during standing posture were recorded by a force platform with or without vibratory stimulus on the upper cervical region, and analyzed by computer. During the neck vibratory stimulation, the center of gravity w...

The ability to quantify the sensation of vibration is a valuable indicator of the state of tactile sensory system. Elevated threshold in the detection of vibratory stimuli may be the first sign of neuropathological disorders. Mechanoreceptive units are responsible for vibrotactile sensation of the skin, and different types of these units respond to different frequencies. Vibrometry is based on ...

Interest in sensitivity to vibration as an aid to neurological diagnosis began in 1889 when Rumpf tested this function in a case of syringomyelia (Fox and Klemperer, 1942). Subsequent investigators found altered vibratory sensitivity in various disorders of the nervous system (e.g., Williamson, 1922). Reduced sensitivity, for example, has been reported in peripheral neuritis, diabetes mellitus,...

This paper introduces the basics of energy harvesters and demonstrates two specific vibratory-type energy harvesters developed at the University of Hyogo. The fabrication and evaluation results of the vibratory-type energy harvesters, which employ electrostatic and electromagnetic mechanisms, are described. The aim of developing these devices is to realize a power source for an autonomous human...