Identificação de características do sinal EMG para o estudo da relação entre tremor fisiológico e idade

Abstract

Elderly people are the individuals who are more affected by tremor and its consequences, responsible for individual s physical and social deterioration. In the current context, the elderly represents a great parcel of world-wide population, that suffered a great increase in the last past years. As the tremor can represent an indication of complex syndromes, its study is of great impact and importance, because the results of such studies may, improve the quality of life of individuals reducing therefore related social and economical costs. The main aim of this research was to seek for features extracted from electromyographic signals that can be used in the analysis of the relation between physiological tremor and ageing. For this, the electromyographic activity of groups of subjects from different ages, without neurologic dysfunctions and without the use of any drugs that can amplify or attenuate the tremor, it was collected by means of the execution of three distinct experimental protocols, being the same based on neurological tests that employs the spiral of Archimedes. The data analysis consisted on the evaluation of features extracted from the electromyographic activity, and on the characterization of the statistical properties of this features by means of the statistical technique called Bootstrap. The results showed that in general it is quite complex to characterize the relationship between tremor and electromyography through the features investigated, but trends were observed that may be related to physiological changes of groups from different ages.