Chihhong Chou

• Ph.D.
• PostDoc Position at Shanghai Jiao Tong University

The ability of a novel biorealistic hand prosthesis for grasp force control reveals improved neural compatibility between the human-prosthetic interaction. The primary purpose here was to validate a virtual training platform for amputee subjects and evaluate the respective roles of visual and tactile information in fundamental force control tasks....

Sensory feedback provides critical interactive information for the effective use of hand prostheses. Non-invasive neural interfaces allow convenient access to the sensory system, but they communicate a limited amount of sensory information. This study examined a novel approach that leverages a direct and natural sensory afferent pathway, and enable...

Background Advanced prosthetic hands may embed nanosensors and microelectronics in their cosmetic skin. Heat influx may cause damage to these delicate structures. Protecting the integrity of the prosthetic hand becomes critical and necessary to ensure sustainable function. This study aims to mimic the sensorimotor control strategy of the human hand...

Introduction Either non-invasive somatotopic or substitute sensory feedback is capable of conveying a single modality of sensory information from prosthetic hands to amputees. However, the neurocognitive ability of amputees to integrate multi-modality sensory information for functional discrimination is unclear. The purpose of this study was to ass...

Significant advances have been made to improve control and to provide sensory functions for bionic hands. However, great challenges remain, limiting wide acceptance of bionic hands due to inadequate bidirectional neural compatibility with human users. Recent research has brought to light the necessity for matching neuromechanical behaviors between...

Objective Sensory feedback of upper-limb prostheses is widely desired and studied. As important components of proprioception, position, and movement feedback help users to control prostheses better. Among various feedback methods, electrotactile stimulation is a potential method for coding proprioceptive information of a prosthesis. This study was...

italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Objective : Human neuromuscular reflex control provides a biological model for a compliant hand prosthesis. Here we present a computational approach to understanding the emerging human-like compliance, force and position control, and stiffness adaptati...

In this paper, a novel prototype of a cable-driven prosthetic hand with biorealisitic muscle property was developed. A pair of antagonistic muscles controlled the flexion and extension of the prosthetic index finger. Biorealistic properties of muscle were emulated using a neuromorphic model of muscle reflex in real time. The model output was couple...

The absence of somatotopic sensory feedback limits the function of conventional prosthetic hands. In this study, we integrated a non-invasive sensory feedback system into a commercial Bebionic hand with new customized surface stimulation electrodes. Multiple modalities of tactile and hand aperture sensory information were conveyed to the amputee vi...

Tremor in Parkinson's disease (PD) is caused by synchronized activation bursts in limb muscles. Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an effective clinical therapy for inhibiting tremor and improving movement disorders in PD patients. However, the neural mechanism of how tremor symptom is suppressed by DBS at motor unit (MU) level remains unclear. This p...

Purpose: Sensory feedback for prosthetics is an important issue. The area of forearm stump skin that has evoked tactile sensation (ETS) of fingers is defined as the projected finger map (PFM), and the area close to the PFM region that does not have ETS is defined as the non-projected finger map (NPFM). Previous studies have confirmed that ETS can r...

A previous study indicated that synergy-based functional electrical stimulation (FES) may improve instantaneous upper-limb motor performance for stroke survivors. However, it remains unclear whether the improvements will sustain over time to achieve functional gains associated with a task-oriented training (TOT). This pilot study was designed to in...

The human hand has compliant properties arising from muscle biomechanics and neural reflexes, which are absent in conventional prosthetic hands. We recently proved the feasibility to restore neuromuscular reflex control (NRC) to prosthetic hands using real-time computing neuromorphic chips. Here we show that restored NRC augments the ability of ind...

Restoring neuromuscular reflex properties in the control of a prosthetic hand may potentially approach human-level grasp functions in the prosthetic hand. Previous studies have confirmed the feasibility of real-time emulation of a monosynaptic spinal reflex loop for prosthetic control [1]. This study continues to explore how well the biomimetic con...

The ability to perceive prosthetic grasping may enable amputees to better interact with external objects. This may require customized coding of multiple sensory feedback for each amputee. This study developed a protocol to determine optimal modulation ranges of sensations elicited by transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS). These sensati...

The ability to perceive prosthetic grasping may enable amputees to better interact with external objects. This may require customized coding of multiple sensory feedback for each amputee. This study developed a protocol to determine optimal modulation ranges of sensations elicited by transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS). These sensati...

Integrating a prosthetic hand to amputees with seamless neural compatibility presents a grand challenge to neuroscientists and neural engineers for more than half century. Mimicking anatomical structure or appearance of human hand does not lead to improved neural connectivity to the sensorimotor system of amputees. The functions of modern prostheti...

Background: This paper describes the design and test of an automated functional electrical stimulation (FES) system for poststroke rehabilitation training. The aim of automated FES is to synchronize electrically induced movements to assist residual movements of patients. Methods: In the design of the FES system, an accelerometry module detected...

Current control of prosthetic hands is ineffective when grasping deformable, irregular, or heavy objects. In humans, grasping is achieved under spinal reflexive control of the musculotendon skeletal structure, which produces a hand stiffness commensurate with the task. We hypothesize that mimicking reflex on a prosthetic hand may improve grasping p...

The objective of this study is to develop an experimental protocol to define the range of modulation for different sensory modalities elicited by transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) in amputees with evoked tactile sensation (ETS). Modulation ranges of sensory modalities, such as vibration, buzz, tingling etc., are essential for desig...

This study assessed the feasibility to restore finger-specific sensory feedback in transradial amputees with electrical stimulation of evoked tactile sensation (ETS). Here we investigated primary somatosensory cortical (SI) responses of ETS using Magnetoencephalography. SI activations revealed a causal correlation with peripheral stimulation of pro...

Prosthetic and therapeutic devices have been developed to ameliorate the quality of daily living for people with amputation or neurological disorders. However, many of them fall short of functional benefits, and therefore, are frequently rejected by users due to awkward control, or no awareness of interaction during tasks. Traditional wisdom in the...

Background: A patient whose spinal cord was damaged due to accident may result in Tetraplegia or lose the ability to control his/her daily living environment. Currently, patients must use an invasive tool tongue movement, to help the patient communicate with the external environment. Objective: This study designed a non-invasive tongue movement...

Background: Hemiplegia can cause accidental falls, as the patients place their arms in front of their chests or next to the hips when they walk. This is due to limitations in the ability to swing their arms during walking. Objective: This study proposes a functional electrical stimulator approach in order to improve the foot drop and abnormal mo...

After stroke happened, central nervous system (CNS) damage causes not only drop foot, but also upper extremity limit when the patient is walking. Drop foot causes the pain on the patient's legs, and furthermore, it may make the patient fall down. The general way to treat is to equip the patient with ankle foot orthoses or commit Functional Electric...

In nowadays' medical care, needle-stick injury accounts for a great proportion in all of the accidents. For example when doctors and nurses do the acts of medical treatment, or when relevant personnel dispose of the medical wastes, it is a high probability that they are injured by the used syringe needle. Because there is a serious potential fatal...

This research involves developing a hand-skate training system for the upper extremity rehabilitation. Included in this system are a hand-skating board, radio frequency identification (RFID) reader, and a computer. The hand-skating board is a platform with multiple RFID-tags and a RFID reader under the hand-skate for the patients to operate “∞” fig...

In this study, a patient-driven loop control in a non-invasive functional electrical stimulation (FES) system was designed to restore ambulation function of patients with stroke with their residual capabilities. With this patient-driven loop control, patients use the electromyographic (EMG) signals from their voluntary controlled muscles in affecte...