Enrique Germany Morrison

Catholic University of Louvain | UCLouvain · L'institut de Neuroscience (IoNS)

Assessing musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the workplace is vital for improving worker health and safety, reducing costs, and increasing productivity. Traditional hazard identification methods are often inefficient, particularly in detecting complex risks, which may compromise risk management. This study introduces a semi-automatic platform usin...

Seizures produce autonomic symptoms, mainly sympathetic but also parasympathetic in origin. Within this context, the vagus nerve is a key player as it carries information from the different organs to the brain and vice versa. Hence, exploiting vagal neural traffic for seizure detection might be a promising tool to improve the efficacy of closed-loo...

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an adjunctive treatment against epilepsy. It is proposed for patients who do not respond to antiepileptic drugs and for whom it is impossible to surgically remove an epileptogenic focus. VNS consists of an implanted pulse generator that delivers trains of electrical pulses to the left vagus nerve, which induces anti...

There are currently no established biomarkers for predicting the therapeutic effectiveness of Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS). Given that neural desynchronization is a pivotal mechanism underlying VNS action, EEG synchronization measures could potentially serve as predictive biomarkers of VNS response. Notably, an increased brain synchronization in d...

This study investigates the dose-dependent EEG effects of Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. This research examines how varying VNS intensities impacts EEG power spectrum and synchronization in a cohort of 28 patients. Patients were categorized into responders, partial-responders, and non-responders based on sei...

The locus coeruleus–norepinephrine system is thought to be involved in the clinical effects of vagus nerve stimulation. This system is known to prevent seizure development and induce long-term plastic changes, particularly with the release of norepinephrine in the hippocampus. However, the requisites to become responder to the therapy and the mecha...

Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) is a therapeutic method used for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) for over 30 years[1], but its effectiveness varies amongst individuals. An individualized dose could potentially yield a more effective therapy than a standard dose. The primary assumed mechanism for VNS therapy is thalamocortical desynchroniz...

In 1/3 of epilepsy patients, medication may be insufficient, and respective surgery may be offered whenever the seizure onset is localized and situated in a non-eloquent brain region. When surgery is not possible, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) therapy can be used as an add-on treatment to reduce seizure frequency and/or duration. However, screening...

In the search to enhance ergonomic risk assessments for upper limb work-related activities, this study introduced and validated the efficiency of an inertial motion capture system, paired with a specialized platform that digitalized the OCRA index. Conducted in a semi-controlled environment, the proposed methodology was compared to traditional risk...

Objective: In 1/3 of patients, anti-seizure medications (ASM) may be insufficient, and resective surgery may be offered whenever the seizure onset is localized and situated in a non-eloquent brain region. When surgery is not feasible or fails, vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) therapy can be used as an add-on treatment to reduce seizure frequency and/...

Background: Ventilator-induced diaphragm dysfunction occurs rapidly following the onset of mechanical ventilation and has significant clinical consequences. Phrenic nerve stimulation has shown promise in maintaining diaphragm function by inducing diaphragm contractions. Non-invasive stimulation is an attractive option as it minimises the procedura...

Objective: During the presurgical evaluation, manual electrical source imaging (ESI) provides clinically useful information in one-third of the patients but it is time-consuming and requires specific expertise. This prospective study aims to assess the clinical added value of a fully automated ESI analysis in a cohort of patients with MRI-negative...

Commercially available electromechanical prosthetic devices still lack touch-sensing capabilities, and there is a huge gap between research devices and commercially available ones. There is a need for small flexible touch sensors with high accuracy and sensitivity for this type of device. Touch sensors in prosthetic devices are needed for feedback...

Background: Diaphragm muscle atrophy during mechanical ventilation begins within 24 hours and progresses rapidly with significant clinical consequences. Electrical stimulation of the phrenic nerves using invasive electrodes has shown promise in maintaining diaphragm condition by inducing intermittent diaphragm muscle contraction. However, widespre...

This extended paper presents the development and implementation at a prototype level of a wireless, low-cost system for the measurement of the electrical bioimpedance of the chest with two channels using the AD5933 in a bipolar electrode configuration to measure impedance pneumography. The measurement device works for impedance measurements ranging...

Gait analysis has been widely studied by researchers due to the impact in clinical fields. It provides relevant information on the condition of a patient’s pathologies. In the last decades, different gait measurement methods have been developed in order to identify parameters that can contribute to gait cycles. Analyzing those parameters, it is pos...

The human gait uses both legs to propel the body to displace it to another place. This action has a huge repercussion in daily activities. That is the main reason why the study of human gait has an important relevance in order to maintain a healthy gait. This paper shows a simple method of gait subphases segmentation using a smart insole with custo...

This paper presents the development of a myoelectric prosthetic hand based on a 3D printed model. A myoelectric control strategy based on artificial neural networks is implemented on a microcontroller for online position estimation. Position estimation performance achieves a correlation index of 0.78. Also a study involving transcutaneous electrica...