Effect of Motor Development Levels on Kinematic Synergies During Two-Hand Catching in Children

The ability to coordinate different body parts under different constraints that are imposed by organism, environment, and tasks during motor development might be different in children. The aim of this study was to examine whether children with different motor development levels are different with regard to multijoint coordination during two-hand catching. Eighty-four children (age: 6.05 ±0.67 years) who were assessed on object control skills were recruited voluntarily. The biomechanical model was defined from 20 movements of seven segments (shoulders, elbows, wrists, and torso), and the principal component analysis was used to quantify the multijoint coordination and kinematic synergies during catching. The results showed that the redundancy of joints in two-hand catching is controlled by three kinematic synergies that defined the majority of the variance. The participants who were grouped based on their development levels did not show differences in the number and strength of synergies; however, they were different in the utilization of the kinematic synergies for successful catching. In conclusion, the number and the strength of the kinematic synergies during two-hand catching are not affected by the developmental levels and are related to the nature of the task.

Effects on Postural Kinematics of Performing a Cognitive Task During Upright Standing

The execution of cognitive tasks is known to alter postural sway during standing, but the underlying mechanisms are still debated. This study investigated how performing a mental task modified balance control during standing. We required 15 healthy adult males to maintain an upright stance under conditions of simply relaxing and maintaining normal quiet standing (control condition) or while performing a secondary cognitive task (mental arithmetic). Under each condition, we measured the participants’ center of pressure and used kinematic measurements for a quantitative evaluation of postural control modulation. We calculated the standard deviation of the joint angles (ankle, knee, and hip) and the estimated joint stiffness to measure joint mobility changes in postural control. To estimate the kinematic pattern of covariation among these joints, we used uncontrolled manifold analysis, an assessment of the strength of multijoint coordination. Compared to normal standing, executing the cognitive task while standing led to reduced movements of the ankle and hip joints. There were no significant differences in ankle stiffness or uncontrolled manifold ratios between the conditions. Our results suggest that when performing a secondary cognitive task during standing, neither changes in the modification of stiffness nor the strength of multijoint coordination (both of which preserve the center of mass position) explains changes in postural sway.

Adaptation of multijoint coordination during standing balance in healthy young and healthy old individuals

Standing balance requires multijoint coordination between the ankles and hips. We investigated how humans adapt their multijoint coordination to adjust to various conditions and whether the adaptation differed between healthy young participants and healthy elderly. Balance was disturbed by push/pull rods, applying two continuous and independent force disturbances at the level of the hip and between the shoulder blades. In addition, external force fields were applied, represented by an external stiffness at the hip, either stabilizing or destabilizing the participants' balance. Multivariate closed-loop system-identification techniques were used to describe the neuromuscular control mechanisms by quantifying the corrective joint torques as a response to body sway, represented by frequency response functions (FRFs). Model fits on the FRFs resulted in an estimation of time delays, intrinsic stiffness, reflexive stiffness, and reflexive damping of both the ankle and hip joint. The elderly generated similar corrective joint torques but had reduced body sway compared with the young participants, corresponding to the increased FRF magnitude with age. When a stabilizing or destabilizing external force field was applied at the hip, both young and elderly participants adapted their multijoint coordination by lowering or respectively increasing their neuromuscular control actions around the ankles, expressed in a change of FRF magnitude. However, the elderly adapted less compared with the young participants. Model fits on the FRFs showed that elderly had higher intrinsic and reflexive stiffness of the ankle, together with higher time delays of the hip. Furthermore, the elderly adapted their reflexive stiffness around the ankle joint less compared with young participants. These results imply that elderly were stiffer and were less able to adapt to external force fields.

Strength, Multijoint Coordination, and Sensorimotor Processing Are Independent Contributors to Overall Balance Ability

For young adults, balance is essential for participation in physical activities but is often disrupted following lower extremity injury. Clinical outcome measures such as single limb balance (SLB), Y-balance (YBT), and the single limb hop and balance (SLHB) tests are commonly used to quantify balance ability following injury. Given the varying demands across tasks, it is likely that such outcome measures provide useful, although task-specific, information. But the extent to which they are independent and contribute to understanding the multiple contributors to balance is not clear. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the associations among these measures as they relate to the different contributors to balance. Thirty-seven recreationally active young adults completed measures including Vertical Jump, YBT, SLB, SLHB, and the new Lower Extremity Dexterity test. Principal components analysis revealed that these outcome measures could be thought of as quantifying the strength, multijoint coordination, and sensorimotor processing contributors to balance. Our results challenge the practice of using a single outcome measure to quantify the naturally multidimensional mechanisms for everyday functions such as balance. This multidimensional approach to, and interpretation of, multiple contributors to balance may lead to more effective, specialized training and rehabilitation regimens.

Multi-Joint Coordination of Functional Arm Reaching: Induced Position Analysis

Functional arm reaching involves multilinked joints: shoulder, elbow, and wrist. We propose that induced position analysis is a useful analytical tool for multijoint coordination of arm reaching. This method was used to compute the contributions of the net joint moment to the hand position when reaching forward. We describe the method and give examples of validating this model with motion capture data. The shoulder and elbow were prime movers of the arm: both acted together with an “overshoot” and “undershoot” pattern respectively to move the hand forward into the final position.

MULTIJOINT COORDINATION DURING SIT-TO-STAND TASK IN PEOPLE WITH NON-SPECIFIC CHRONIC LOW BACK PAIN

Sit-to-stand (STS) is an important functional task affected by low back pain (LBP). It requires fundamental coordination among all segments of the body to control important performance variables such as body's center of mass (CM) and head positions. This study was conducted to determine whether LBPs could coordinate their multiple joints to achieve the task stability to the same extent as healthy controls. About 11 non-specific chronic LBP and 12 healthy control subjects performed STS task at three postural difficulty levels: rigid surface — open eyes (RO), rigid surface — closed eyes (RC) and narrow surface — closed eyes (NC). Motion variability of seven body segments, CM and head positions were calculated across 15 trials, and uncontrolled manifold (UCM) approach was used to investigate joint coordination. This approach partitioned segment angle variations into component that stabilizes a given performance variable and leads to task performance flexibility (UCM variability: VUCM) and that which does not stabilize the performance variable and leads to task performance error (orthogonal variability: VORT). The results showed that LBPs demonstrated significantly less VUCMregarding the control of horizontal CM position and greater VORTregarding the control of horizontal head position. The current findings revealed that multijoint coordination was impaired in the LBP subjects. These altered motor coordination strategies would make their postural control system less adaptive to altered postural demands and may predispose these subjects to re-injury.

Control and Estimation of Posture During Quiet Stance Depends on Multijoint Coordination

This study tested the hypotheses that all major joints along the longitudinal axis of the body are equally active during quiet standing and that their motions are coordinated to stabilize the spatial positions of the center of mass (CM) and head. Analyses of the effect of joint configuration variance on the stability of the CM and head positions were performed using the uncontrolled manifold (UCM) approach. Subjects stood quietly with arms folded across their chests for three 5-min trials each with and without vision. The UCM analysis revealed that the six joints examined were coordinated such that their combined variance had minimal effect on the CM and head positions. Removing vision led to a structuring of the resulting increased joint variance such that little of the increase affected stability of the CM and head positions. The results reveal a control strategy involving coordinated variations of most major joints to stabilize variables important to postural control during quiet stance.