To establish effective rehabilitation techniques, elucidating the mechanism of adaptation to the changes in body functions is necessary. As abnormalities in somatognosia can occur even in diseases that do not cause motor dysfunction, the brain creates and maintains a model of the body. The purpose of research on embodied-brain systems science is to elucidate the neural mechanisms of the model created in the brain and to apply these findings to rehabilitation interventions. This special issue will focus on such adaptation mechanism in humans and animals as well as their application to robotics.
The first paper contains a review of neuronal mechanisms of postural control by utilizing multi-sensory information by Prof. Takakusaki who was invited by the editors to provide valuable inputs. In addition to this review article, the editors have included 8 original papers.
Two papers are on motor control and motor learning: the role of awareness in motor learning (Kondo), and the characteristics of motor control while tracking movements of the human wrist (Kim).
This is followed by four papers about the analysis of human postural control: muscle synergy structure in standing-up motion (Yang), the modeling of human stance postural control with multisensory inputs (Jiang), a motion analysis of patients with knee osteoarthritis (Ishikawa), and an analysis of crutch-assisted gait pattern (Yozu).
Last two papers are about studies on rehabilitation devices for neurological disorders: the control of an electromyography-based power assist device (Yoshimura), and a virtual reality platform for neurorehabilitation (Inamura).
The editors believe that the above papers cover the important topics in the science of embodied-brain systems.
The editors would like to thank all the authors who submitted their papers to this special issue and all the reviewers for their time and thoughtful comments to help improve the papers. Another papers will appear in the next issue of Advanced Robotics. The editors also express their gratitude to the staff of Advanced Robotics, in particular, Ms. Noriko Watanabe. This special issue would not have been possible without her support.
The University of Tokyo, JapanEnrico Pagello
University of Padua, ItalyJun Ueda
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA