Dr. Brennan Armshaw’s Laboratory

Behavioral Approaches to Health and Wellness: Many of the barriers affecting health and wellness are behavioral in nature. These behavioral factors play a role in chronic disease, medical compliance, and rehabilitative outcomes, to name a few. Dr. Armshaw’s research focuses on the behavioral barriers related to muscular and neuromuscular rehabilitation. Using surface electromyograms to measure very small changes in neuromuscular activity (a key indicator of muscle strength and control). Dr. Armshaw’s work investigates methods to further individualize and optimize historic approaches to surface electromyographic biofeedback to improve rehabilitative outcomes, for example, for patients recovering from injuries such as total knee replacement or ACL surgery. Muscular control is a learned skill, and while physiological barriers may interfere with one’s ability to control their muscles on command with proper measures and individualized SMART goal it is possible to retrain muscle use and improve quality of life.

REU participants will lead research projects that extend the ongoing line of investigation into the effects of feedback on muscular activity and methods (such as gamification) to optimize physical rehabilitation following injury or surgery. REU participants will gain technical laboratory skills related to the identification of muscle groups, placement and operation of surface electromyograms, the implementation of different feedback types and schedules, and graphical and statistical analysis of resulting behavioral data. REU participants will also develop a deeper understanding of experimental design, with particular emphasis on methods for controlling confounds related to fatigue, dose and order effects. REU students will also develop skills related to the translation of behavioral research to medical and vis versa.