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Flapping flight is the most power-demanding mode of locomotion, associated with a suite of anatomical specializations in adult birds. In contrast, many developing birds use their forelimbs long before acquiring "flight adaptations", to enhance leg performance and, in some cases, fly. How does anatom...
Constraining step length and speed in humans can result in pronounced changes in gait, but such situations seldom occur naturally. In contrast, many quadrupeds have pairs of legs with differing lengths. Since these pairs translate at the same absolute speed and stride lengths, they present a natural...
While steady-state gait is relatively well-understood, transient manoeuvres have received far less dedicated research. These motions are difficult to study because they can be dangerous when executed at high speed. Additionally, differing points of initiation, animal morphologies and environments cr...
Exercise when young has been shown to induce an adaptive response that may be beneficial for lifelong bone health. Using gait experiments coupled with finite element models, we sought to understand how bone accommodates the mechanical demands associated with increasing mass. We found that both murin...
All animals must effectively sense and respond to their environment in order to survive. Successfully recovering from a stumble, escaping a predator, or catching prey requires quickly detecting changes in the environment and performing appropriate compensatory movements. The speed of an animalâ€â...
Recent studies demonstrate that N2A titin binds strongly to actin in vitro in the presence of calcium. This interaction should decrease titin length, increase titin stiffness, and produce a dependence of mechanical behavior on length at the time of activation. These properties are absent in skeletal...
Tendon exhibits a hierarchical fibrillar structure, and force transfer across tendon subunits and at different length scales is an integral part of the tissue’s mechanical function. Understanding multiscale mechanisms across distinct tendons may improve therapies to restore degenerate tendon ...
The process of aging has been shown to induce significant changes to the connective tissue structures associated with skeletal muscle. A commonly observed consequence of these changes is a reduction in muscle quality such that a relatively larger proportion of a muscle’s cross-sectional area is co...
Conventional exoskeleton designs for improving human ‘gas-mileage’ rely on motors to transfer net energy from machine to user with the intention of reducing net muscle work and thus, heat loss. In contrast, our design philosophy is that unpowered or minimally powered exoskeletons offer a streaml...
We used a predictive simulation framework to explore the effect of muscle-tendon (MT) properties on gait pattern selection and cost of transport. Increased maximal muscle contraction speed and hence power induced a transition from walking to running at lower speeds. A large decrease in tendon stiffn...
Animals must seamlessly integrate mechanics and sensorimotor control to achieve agile and stable locomotion in complex environments. Striding bipedal animals (humans and ground birds) use walking and running gaits that look qualitatively similar in whole-body dynamics, gait duty factor, and ground r...
The force-length relationship in skeletal muscle is attributed to the requirement for overlap between the contractile proteins actin and myosin. However, this relationship shifts with changes in muscle activation. Here we present data suggesting that this activation-dependent shift occurs not only b...
Animal musculoskeletal models have great potential to inform human biomechanical modelling methodology. Here, fully subject-specific human lower limb models were created using similar methods to those previously used to generate a mouse hindlimb musculoskeletal model. The merits of both models and t...
The functional design of skeletal muscle is shaped by conflicting selective pressures between support and propulsion.This study uses a custom-built OpenSim model of varanid lizards to understand how size-related changes are reflected in changes in joint moments at the knee and ankle.
Here we present a new musculoskeletal model of the guinea fowl pelvic limb. We use the model to explore how activation and compliance interact to influence the operating lengths and force capacity of muscle.
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