Leonardo Abdala Elias

Ricardo Gonçalves Molinari, Leonardo Abdala Elias

Restoring natural and intuitive hand function requires simultaneous and proportional control (SPC) of multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs). This study systematically evaluated the multichannel linear descriptors-based block field method (MLD-BFM) for continuous decoding of five finger-joint DoFs by leveraging the rich spatial information of high-density surface electromyography (HD sEMG). Twenty-one healthy participants performed dynamic sinusoidal finger movements while HD sEMG signals were recorded from the extensor digitorum communis (EDC) and flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) muscles. MLD-BFM extracted region-specific spatial features, including effective field strength ($Σ$), field-strength variation rate ($Φ$), and spatial complexity ($Ω$). Model performance was optimized (block size: $2 \times 2$; window: 0.15 s) and compared with conventional time-domain features and dimensionality reduction approaches when applied to multi-output regression models. MLD-BFM consistently achieved the highest $\mathrm{R}^2_{\mathrm{vw}}$ values across all models. The multilayer perceptron (MLP) combined with MLD-BFM yielded the best performance ($\mathrm{R}^2_{\mathrm{vw}} = 86.68\% \pm 0.33$). Time-domain features also showed strong predictive capability and were statistically comparable to MLD-BFM in some models, whereas dimensionality reduction techniques exhibited lower accuracy. Decoding accuracy was higher for the middle and ring fingers than for the thumb. Overall, MLD-BFM improved continuous finger movement decoding accuracy, underscoring the importance of taking advantage of the spatial richness of HD sEMG. These findings suggest that spatially structured features enhance SPC and provide practical guidance for designing robust, real-time, and responsive myoelectric interfaces.

Caetano M. Ranieri, Jhielson M. Pimentel, Marcelo R. Romano et al.

In this work we propose a new biophysical computational model of brain regions relevant to Parkinson's Disease based on local field potential data collected from the brain of marmoset monkeys. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder, linked to the death of dopaminergic neurons at the substantia nigra pars compacta, which affects the normal dynamics of the basal ganglia-thalamus-cortex neuronal circuit of the brain. Although there are multiple mechanisms underlying the disease, a complete description of those mechanisms and molecular pathogenesis are still missing, and there is still no cure. To address this gap, computational models that resemble neurobiological aspects found in animal models have been proposed. In our model, we performed a data-driven approach in which a set of biologically constrained parameters is optimised using differential evolution. Evolved models successfully resembled single-neuron mean firing rates and spectral signatures of local field potentials from healthy and parkinsonian marmoset brain data. As far as we are concerned, this is the first computational model of Parkinson's Disease based on simultaneous electrophysiological recordings from seven brain regions of Marmoset monkeys. Results show that the proposed model could facilitate the investigation of the mechanisms of PD and support the development of techniques that can indicate new therapies. It could also be applied to other computational neuroscience problems in which biological data could be used to fit multi-scale models of brain circuits.