Animals flexibly change their locomotion triggered by an identical stimulus depending on the environmental context and behavioral state. This indicates that additional sensory inputs in different modality from the stimulus triggering the escape response affect the neuronal circuit governing that behavior. However, how the spatio-temporal relationships between these two stimuli effect a behavior...

BACKGROUND Several studies have shown that both objective and subjective measurements are related to exercise capacity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In this study the relative contribution of lung function, maximal inspiratory pressure, dyspnoea, and quality of life to the performance in a walking distance test and a bicycle ergometer test was investigated. ME...

Stimulation of blinded and sighted crayfish with ventrally directed light evokes a slow tail flexion response or a tail flexion accompanied by backward walking. The response latencies and durations of sighted animals are shorter than those of blinded animals, which indicates that visual inputs can speed a response which can be released by extraretinal photoreceptors alone. Recordings from elect...

OBJECTIVE The present study aimed to: 1) examine the association of biological maturation effect on children's performance at a motor coordination battery and 2) to assess whether the association between biological maturation and scores obtained in motor coordination tests is mediated by some anthropometric measurement. METHODS The convenience sample consisted of 73 male children aged 8 years...

Hoffman BW, Cresswell AG, Carroll TJ, Lichtwark GA. Muscle fascicle strains in human gastrocnemius during backward downhill walking. J Appl Physiol 116: 1455–1462, 2014. First published April 4, 2013; doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01431.2012.—Extensive muscle damage can be induced in isolated muscle preparations by performing a small number of stretches during muscle activation. While typically thes...

BACKGROUND The attainment of walking is a focus of physical therapy intervention in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and may affect their independence in mobility and participation in daily activities. However, knowledge of determinants of independent walking to guide physical therapists' decision making is lacking. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify child factors (postural cont...

Deep-sea isopods of the family Munnopsidae exhibit four modes of swimming: forward striding, slow backward pedalling, fast backward pedalling and escape, the first two of which use asymmetric phases of leg movement. Instead of moving the left and right limbs (pereopods, P2­P7) of a segment in-phase (e.g. RP2LP2, RP3LP3, RP4LP4), as do most aquatic insects, leg movement is more like that of ...