Abstract Archive

postural control during tasks of quiet standing, especially in the presence of sensorial deficit. Dance interventions have been shown to have a positive impact on postural control. Thus, the aim of the current project was to evaluate the effects of a dance intervention on postural control in individ...

The efficacy of external ankle braces to protect against sudden inversion sprain has yet to be determined, while taking into account the possible placebo effect of brace application. In this controlled study, we assessed kinematics using both actively protecting and placebo braces in subjects with a...

The mechanisms by which fear of falling (FoF) increases fall risk are not well understood. While increased arousal and anxiety in response to perceived postural threat is known to affect postural control during standing and following non-stepping perturbations, the effect on stepping responses remai...

The aim of this study was to use computational simulation to investigate the effect of orthopaedic plate stiffness and its thickness, on the mechanical response of the fracture site within an osteoporotic tibia, and to determine the optimised conditions in favour of the bone healing process.

This study provides a case series of five children with CP, examining the effect of tuned and non-tuned AFO-footwear combinations (AFO-FCs) on their gait. Walking with a tuned AFO-FC was found to produce improvements in several key gait parameters. However, the type of gait pattern demonstrated by t...

This work evaluated the effects of grip force magnitude and forearm muscle activity on wrist kinematics in response to sudden wrist perturbations. A haptic wrist robot delivered perturbations that caused wrist flexion, extension, radial and ulnar deviation. Prior to each perturbation, participants p...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of tDCS on CMJ performance. In the real-tDCS condition, CMJ height increased by 3.15% and 2.14% at 0min and 30 mins separately compared to pre-test. The hip joint moment in real-tDCS condition was significantly larger than that of sham-tDCS condit...

Mild fatigue during activities of daily living may have a greater impact on muscle function in older versus younger adults. Multi-muscle pattern (MMP) analysis was performed combining a wavelet transform and principal component analysis (PCA) to discriminate contributions of principal patterns (PP) ...

The objective of this study was to assess the impact of a self-lacing footwear system with three conditions of increasing lace tension (compared to a control basketball shoe) on foot containment by measuring foot-shoe motion during cutting using high speed stereo radiography (HSSR). Two shoes were e...

Forward propulsion, a key contributor to walking speed and walking adaptability, is mainly generated by the ankle plantarflexors. Our prior research showed that walking with a solid AFO hindered forward propulsion generation and overall mobility in healthy adults. However, this has not been examined...

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is one of the most frequent sports medicine injuries and characterized by reduced muscle strength, joint instability, and proprioceptive deficits. The long-term effects of these symptoms are excessive impact forces that are associated with knee osteoarthritis....

Why do cyclists sway their bicycle from side to side when riding out of the saddle? We tested the theory that lateral bicycle sway may decrease the work performed by the rider on their center of mass (CoM) and also impact the contribution of power at the hip, knee and ankle during standing cycling. ...

A prosthetic shock-absorbing pylon (SAP) attenuates impact forces to dissipate shock in individuals with amputation. However, it is unclear how a SAP and their spring stiffness affect the mechanical work done by the prosthetic limb. We observed that SAP spring stiffness had a speed-dependent effect ...

Protective arm reactions were evoked in 12 younger adults to determine the effect of delaying deployment of a protective response. Participants were supported in a forward-leaning position that was released at an unpredictable time. Upon release, participants rapidly oriented the arms to prevent col...

This study evaluated four different forms of neuro-musculoskeletal modelling estimating musculotendon forces during gait in children with cerebral palsy and typically developing (TD) children. A scaled-generic musculoskeletal model for each child was used, estimating musculotendon forces by, i.e. I)...

This study investigated the displacement within the Achilles tendon during running with traditional shoes, minimalistic shoes and barefoot. Displacement was calculated using ultrasound speckle tracking for three different portions in the tendon: deep, mid and superficial. The deep layer displaced si...

Biomechanical factors are poor predictors of Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury risk making the screening of athletes questionable [1]. However, these predictions are often based on a single parameter observed in a single task. This study aimed to determine if parameters measured across multipl...

Exercise prescribed to treat osteoarthritis significantly improve grip strength, but it is unclear how they affect thumb specific forces. In this study, six weeks of hand exercise improved thumb force application in osteoarthritic (OA) and older healthy participants but not for the younger healthy p...

The biological ankle joint can change its stiffness in response to various locomotor tasks (e.g., load carriage), but the direct effect of ankle stiffness on metabolic power during various tasks is not fully understood. We evaluated the effect of ankle stiffness during load carrying tasks on metabol...

Diminished gluteus maximus activation in persons with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAIS) has been proposed to contribute to symptomatic impingement. The purpose of this pilot project was to investigate if targeted gluteus maximus activation influences transverse plane hip kinematics and ki...

Patellofemoral pain is a common lower extremity disorders among people who engage in running activities. Twenty healthy male participants were selected with various foot progression angles during running. Their kinetics and kinematics associated with patellofemoral pain during habitual and modified ...

This study investigates the differences in head impact exposure (HIE) for the striking player versus the struck player during tackling events in youth football. Head impact data was collected for six youth football games over three seasons using the Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) System to measure magn...

Cervical myelopathy patients are less stable than a control group as determined by analysis of postural stability, through measures on center of pressure, and dynamic stability, through measures of angular momentum regulation. Stability is improved by spinal decompression and stabilization surgery.

We studied the effects of bilateral triple arthrodesis (BTA) on the strength of soleus and peroneus brevis muscles, and on knee flexion/extension during gait using EMG and a kinematic model of the lower limb. We found that the maximum knee flexion and extension was reduced in all patients compared t...

Ankle plantar flexor muscles are significant contributors of locomotor performance and their force-velocity operating region is influenced by a ‘gearing’ mechanism of the foot-ankle system. The aim of this study was to determine whether anatomical variations in foot morphology can influence sole...

It can be difficult for young children to remain focused and avoid fidgeting during postural sway tests of 30 s or longer. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the construct and concurrent validity of sway measures recorded for durations less than 30 s. We measured the CoP RMS error of standing...

Efficiency plateaus during incline walking at slopes above 20%, and is equal to that of concentric muscle activity. We believe that a non-linear increase in leg swing naturally results in the necessary increase in knee angle at heel strike to lift the body as slope increases and minimizes leg swing ...

We used a haptic device to measure the influence of prosthesis type and feedback type (visual, vibration, force) on performance during a grasp-width matching task in five upper limb (UL) prosthesis users. All forms of feedback improved performance over the no feedback condition for each limb type. H...

The influence of orthotics on the kinematics of the trapeziometacarpal (TMC) and scaphotrapeziotrapezoidal (STT) joints during thumb and wrist movement were measured in healthy volunteers using a CT-based approach. Comparison of different types of orthoses show that prefabricated orthoses immobilize...