Background: Long-term patients with diabetes and peripheral neuropathy show altered foot biomechanics and abnormal foot loading. This study aimed at assessing muscle performance and ankle mobility in such patients under controlled conditions.

Brain aging and aging-related neurodegenerative disorders are major health challenges faced by modern societies. Brain aging is associated with cognitive and functional decline and represents the favourable background for the onset and development of dementia. Brain aging is associated with early and subtle anatomo-functional physiological changes that often precede the appearance of clinical signs of cognitive decline. Neuroimaging approaches unveiled the functional correlates of these alterations and helped in the identification of therapeutic targets that can be potentially useful in counteracting age-dependent cognitive decline. A growing body of evidence supports the notion that cognitive stimulation and aerobic training can preserve and enhance operational skills in elderly individuals as well as reduce the incidence of dementia. This review aims at providing an extensive and critical overview of the most recent data that support the efficacy of non-pharmacological and pharmacological interventions aimed at enhancing cognition and brain plasticity in healthy elderly individuals as well as delaying the cognitive decline associated with dementia.

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The paper describes a measurement device for obtaining the kinematic characterisation and isometric loading of ankle joints under different working conditions. Non-invasive, in vivo experiments can be conducted with this experimental apparatus, the potential of which could be usefully exploited in basic biomedical research, prosthesis design, clinical applications, sports medicine and rehabilitation. The device determines the 3D movement of the foot with respect to the shank and evaluates the torques and moments around the three articular axes in relation to any desired angular position of the ankle complex. When integrated with superficial electromyographic techniques and electrical stimulation, it allows the assessment of the functionality of the lower leg in both mechanical and myo-electrical terms. The paper reports the main mechanical and electronic features of the device (high linearity; maximum moment ranges +/- 300 Nm for flexion-extension, +/- 35 Nm for both pronation-supination and internal-external rotation; angular ranges: +/- 100 degrees of dorsi-plantar flexion, +/- 50 degrees of internal-external rotation and prono-supination; linear ranges: +/- 25 mm along each axis). Results from a healthy volunteer, under voluntary or stimulated conditions, helped in testing its operatability, reliability, robustness, repeatability and effectiveness. Preliminary simplified protocols have been also applied to 20 healthy volunteers, and the main results were 80.8 +/- 11.9 degrees of internalexternal rotation, 46.2 +/- 9.1 degrees of prono-supination and 74.6 +/- 13.1 degrees of flexion-extension. Torques and moments were normalised with respect to a body mass index of 30. The maximum plantar flexion moment (57.5 + 21.3 Nm) was measured with the foot at 150 of dorsal flexion; the maximum dorsal flexion moment (50.2 + 20.3 Nm) was measured with the foot at 150 of plantar flexion.

Athletes such as skaters or surfers maintain their balance on very unstable platforms. Remarkably, the most skilled athletes seem to execute these feats almost effortlessly. However, the dynamics that lead to the acquisition of a defined and efficient postural strategy are incompletely known. To understand the posture reorganization process due to learning and expertise, we trained twelve participants in a demanding balance/posture maintenance task for 4 months and measured their muscular activity before and after a (predictable) disturbance cued by an auditory signal. The balance training determined significant delays in the latency of participants' muscular activity: from largely anticipatory muscular activity (prior to training) to a mixed anticipatory-compensatory control strategy (after training). After training, the onset of activation was delayed for all muscles, and the sequence of activation systematically reflected the muscle position in the body from top to bottom: neck/upper body muscles were recruited first and in an anticipatory fashion, whereas leg muscles were recruited after the disturbance onset, producing compensatory adjustments. The resulting control strategy includes a mixture of anticipatory and compensatory postural adjustments, with a systematic sequence of muscular activation reflecting the different demands of neck and leg muscles. Our results suggest that subjects learned the precise timing of the disturbance onset and used this information to deploy postural adjustments just-in-time and to transfer at least part of the control of posture from anticipatory to less-demanding feedback-based strategies. In turn, this strategy shift increases the cost-efficiency of muscular activity, which is a key signature of skilled performance.