Research lead by Dr. Jesse Charlton, in collaboration with Dr. Jean-Sébastien Blouin, Dr. Calvin Kuo and Liam Foulger lead to another significant publication in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.
The team brought experimental pain research into the real world by developing a wearable system that fits in a small backpack! They used electrical stimulation to generate knee pain and inertial sensors to measure walking movements.
The researchers established three key parameters for future implementations of this movement-pain model. First, pain levels drop quickly after 2-3 minutes of constant stimulation, though this habituation can be reduced with rest periods. Second, the area on the knee where participants perceive pain becomes larger with increasing stimulation intensity. Lastly, above a threshold of 1/10 on a standard pain scale, the relationship between electrical current and perceived pain becomes linear.
Interestingly, they also observed that participants experiencing knee pain showed subtle but consistent changes in their walking patterns, tending to bend their knee more.
This portable system opens new possibilities for understanding how pain influences movement in complex and dynamic environments. Beyond pain research, the technology can be adapted to provide non-painful feedback for guiding movement, making it valuable for various movement-feedback applications.
Interested? Learn more about this paper in here.
