Prediction of Neuromuscular Adaptation of Experimentally Induced Neck Pain Using a Musculoskeletal Model

INTRODUCTION The neck is an interesting structure, because the cervical spine is a complex mechanical system with many degrees of freedom. The multiple muscles of the cervical spine act to support and move the head in three-dimensional space. Work-related neck pain is a common problem in society [1], and changes in motor control of the cervical spine have been documented in people with neck pain. Experimental work has verified that experimental muscle pain often results in inhibited activation of the painful muscle [5]. This is also the case in experimental muscle pain in the neck [3;4] while the net output force was unaffected. Falla et al. [4] showed that experimentally induced neck muscle pain resulted in task-dependent changes in cervical agonist/antagonist activity, which indicates a change in load sharing as a compensatory mechanism. The goal of this study is to predict this change of load sharing due to muscle pain in the neck using a musculoskeletal model of the cervical spine based on inverse dynamics and compare the results with the work done by Falla et al. [4].