Focal dystonia (FD) is a devastating neurological condition that can result in the loss of a musician’s playing ability. In pianists, involuntary muscle contractions can cause abnormal finger postures, making it impossible to play at concert level. It is a difficult condition to treat, and although some improvement has been reported with Botulinum toxin therapy, complete recovery is rare. Our s...

BACKGROUND Abnormal hip mechanics are often implicated in female runners with patellofemoral pain. We sought to evaluate a simple gait retraining technique, using a full-length mirror, in female runners with patellofemoral pain and abnormal hip mechanics. Transfer of the new motor skill to the untrained tasks of single leg squat and step descent was also evaluated. METHODS Ten female runners ...

It’s a truism that innovation has the power to create and destroy jobs. One question is whether more jobs are created than are destroyed by innovation. Historically, more new jobs are created partly as a consequence of a growing population (with its increased demands for products and services) and partly because of new demands. The market for mobile phones exploded especially after the inventio...

Facial neuromuscular retraining has been found to be effective in diminishing the effects of synkinesia and improving voluntary movement. In 1982, Balliet and colleagues described a clinical program for facial nerve retraining that included mirror exercises, electromyography (EMG) biofeedback, and personalized home exercise programs for patients more than 2 years after facial nerve injury. Case...

BACKGROUND Focal dystonia in musicians (MD) is a task-specific movement disorder with a loss of voluntary motor control during instrumental playing. Defective inhibition on different levels of the central nervous system is involved in the pathophysiology. Sensorimotor retraining is a therapeutic approach to MD and aims to establish non-dystonic movements. Transcranial direct current stimulation...

We sought to determine if an in-field gait retraining program can reduce excessive impact forces and peak hip adduction without adverse changes in knee joint work during running. Thirty healthy at-risk runners who exhibited high-impact forces were randomized to retraining [21.1 (± 1.9) years, 22.1 (± 10.8) km/week] or control groups [21.0 (± 1.3) years, 23.2 (± 8.7) km/week]. Retrainers were cu...

Traditional classification algorithms assume that training and test data come from similar distributions. This assumption is violated in adversarial settings, where malicious actors modify instances to evade detection. A number of custom methods have been developed for both adversarial evasion attacks and robust learning. We propose the first systematic and general-purpose retraining framework ...