[Our aim is to define optimal stimulation patterns for controlling lower limb movements of spinal cord injured patients. Here we report on a study about cycling movements of healthy subjects under regular conditions and spinal cord injured patients whose cycling movement was generated by functional electrical stimulation. The stimulation pattern required for coordinated activities of lower limb muscles of spinal cord injured patients was improved by using the observations what we gained from measuring and analyzing cycling movements of 42 young healthy subjects. Kinematical parameters (joint angles) and muscle activities (EMG) were recorded simultaneously by an ultrasound based movement analyzing system. We replaced the cycling program of the commercially available stimulator with a new one that we developed on the basis of the measured healthy cycling movements. We present that our new stimulation patterns provided a great increase in the performance of our spinal cord injured patients.]

[Background - Sudden death appears in 8-17% of epilepsy patients non-responding to antiepileptic therapy. Some studies suggest that the most common cause of death is seizure-related cardiac arrhythmia. Aim of study - To analyze the alteration of the heart rate six hours before and after the seizures. Methods - Eighteen patients suffering from focal epilepsy were examined before epilepsy surgery. Video-EEG-ECG was carried out for 2-10 days, and 32 seizures were registered. Analysis of the heart rate was based on the 5- minute-long epochs of the ECGs taken at the 5-10-15- 30th minutes and at the 1-3-6th hours before and after seizures. Results - The heart rate increases (from average 69 beats/min to 92 beats/min, p<0.001) immediately after seizures, tough significantly higher heart rate was observed 3 hours after seizures. There were no patients with severe periictal bradycardia. In one of our patients, ectopic cardiac rhythm occurred after a generalized tonicclonic seizure. Conclusions - We can conclude that the sympathic activity increases while the parasympathic activity decreases after seizures. The observed alterations lasted for a long time and predict to fatal arrhythmias. These suggest that sudden death in epilepsy can be induced by cardiac arrhythmias connected with epileptic seizures.]