Abstract Archive

Joint kinematics during running were compared between performance-matched groups of fifty-seven male and female runners at 11 km/h. Kinematics differed between the sexes at all joints, with the largest differences occurring in adduction-abduction at each joint; during stance females displayed more a...

Multibody dynamic simulations are often used to generate estimates of muscle force and activation profiles during tasks like walking, but it is unclear if these simulations generated accurately capture muscle coordination patterns as measured by experimental electromyography (EMG) data. Muscle syner...

Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (sTBI) commonly leads to gait and balance impairments, but motor strategies adopted by people who suffered of a sTBI have not been characterized yet. Therefore, the aim of the study was to objectively characterize a sTBI population using a set of inertial sensors to des...

Ankle sprains occur at a high rate in high school football. Three-dimensional analyses of football related tasks were performed in players with and without history of ankle sprain. Playing position influenced the magnitude of inversion load that football players with a history of ankle sprain exhibi...

Male artistic gymnasts performing strength elements in their ring routines need a high level of balance and a maximal strength in their arms and shoulder muscles. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a 4-week eccentric-isokinetic training period on muscular activation patterns in t...

The leg-dominance theory suggests that kinetic and kinematic asymmetries place athletes, particularly females, at a higher risk of non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries. Sex and age effects on asymmetry of sagittal plane lower extremity joint angles and moments during the stance phas...

Acceleration-based exercise (e.g. running, jumping) during growth in an avian model increases bone strength, and influences bone shape in a way that is suggestive of larger Achilles tendon moment arms.

The coordination and control of rhythmic, continuous movements are constrained by metabolic energy demands, but it is not known if coordination patterns during discrete, goal-directed tasks such as maximal-height vertical jumping are constrained by energetics. Accordingly, the purpose of this study ...

This study aimed to determine the minimal amount of pressure sensors for the estimation accuracy of vertical ground reaction force (vGRF) in gait tasks. Ten healthy males walked and ran at self-selected speeds. Eight different layouts with different amounts of sensors (3-17 sensors) were established...

Studies of localized muscle fatigue (LMF) under varying physical workload conditions often necessitate experimental testing on multiple days. This study evaluated objective and subjective LMF responses during an identical elbow flexion fatigue protocol on three repeat visits to the laboratory. We fo...

Different intensities of a stimulus (shoe weights) were applied to sport shoes. Participants ran with the shoes on the treadmill and simultaneously, the vertical ground reaction force and the rate of the perceived exertion were measured. The sense of effort and the sense of force were shown to have ...

Time of the day shows effect on different parameters of human behaviour. In this study we determined whether the time of day influences the height and power of vertical jumps in amateur athletes and non-athletes. Here we describe that time of the day have significant effects on jump height but not p...

Studies have identified that energetic costs of endurance running are similar between the sexes, but less is currently known about economical running biomechanics in female runners than male runners. Evidence shows that female runners have the ability to fine-tune their running mechanics to reduce m...

The reduced cardiorespiratory function and muscle performance in the elderly significantly minify an individual's functional aerobic capacity. Some inactive older adults are in an age range that theoretically places them right around their aerobic capacity threshold. Any further decline may make the...

We tested six subjects leaning with vs. without assistance from a spring-powered exosuit. We quantified the effect on back muscle fatigue rate. We found that five of the six subjects showed significant reductions in fatigue rate (ranging from 19-85%) for a subset of lumbar muscles (ranging from one ...

This study examined the effect of abductor muscle strengthening on joint loading in patients with developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH). Abductor strengthening reduced peak hip joint reaction force (JRF) by a maximum of 205.2 N (33.7% body weight), yet also increased anterior hip JRF.

Upon completion of a treadmill-based running retraining that focused on promoting a midfoot strike landing, reduced foot-strike angle and vertical instantaneous loading rates were observed in habitual rearfoot strike runners. We sought to measure whether these modified gait mechanics could be transf...

One of the factors for increasing the ball speed in soccer is the swing speed of the kicking foot. Although previous studies have reported that kinetics and kinematics are important factors for increasing swing speed, detailed knowledge regrading mechanical energy transfer between segments (energy f...

A major challenge in neuromechanics, particularly relevant to human health, is linking muscle-tendon (MT) morphology to proprioception. In anesthetized rats, we recorded intra-axonal sensory signals from active MT contractions. To modify the functional morphology, we physically added in-series sprin...

The quantitative assessments of balance ability with fall risk by functional mobility testing are important. The representative test is Timed up and go (TUG) test. A previous study showed that assessing the TUG test by total duration has limitations in screening faller. Therefore, the TUG test is pe...

The spine is an anatomically complex system with many degrees of freedom. Due to this complexity, multiple motor control strategies may exist to complete a given task. The aim of this work was to identify if distinct coordination strategies are used during spine flexion/extension (FE). Kinematic dat...

A software toolkit, DRRACO, was developed to use a graphics processing unit (GPU) to perform image processing for biplane fluoroscopy analysis. The GPU is used to quickly generate digitally-reconstructed radiographs (DRRs) of bones, and uses GPU-accelerated image processing functions (convolution, d...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between ankle proprioceptive sensory level and balance ability. Healthy ten volunteers participated in this study. Force sense of the proprioception was evaluated using electromyogram (EMG) on the Tibialis anterior (TA) and Gastrocnemius l...

People can continuously optimize their walking gait to reduce energetic cost. However, they do not always do so spontaneously. Here we tested the hypothesis that the cost gradient at the original optimum allows the nervous system to detect when the optimum has changed and thus re-optimize. Using a m...

Patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) is a common complication in female runners related to patellofemoral joint stress (PFJS). Increases in stride length alone may intensify PFJS, while increasing cadence alone may lower it. Running velocity is the product of stride length and cadence. Our purpose wa...

The progressive declines in motor function of multiple sclerosis (MS) are typically preceded by decreases in sensory function. The goal of our study was to evaluate the influence of a treatment that targets sensory nerve fibers (augmented Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation; aTENS) on mobili...

A five-segment musculoskeletal model of the foot was used to estimate peak strains of the spring, deltoid, long plantar, short plantar, bifurcate, and cervical ligaments during two walking speeds. Significantly greater peak strains were found in the 3rd and 4th slips of the long plantar ligament, sh...

We aim to determine whether intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) has potential to promote motor re-education. We found iTBS to have a facilitatory effect on biceps corticomotor excitability in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) and an individual with SCI and upper limb reconstruction. ...

A fatigue testing protocol that closely mimics in vivo loading conditions of equine third metacarpal (MCIII) subchondral bone was developed to help understand the development of subchondral bone injury.