Trunk motor behavior has been reported to be altered in low-back pain. This may be associated with impaired lumbar proprioception, which could be compensated by trunk stiffening. We assessed trunk control by measuring center-of-pressure, lumbar kinematics and trunk muscle electromyography in 20 low-back pain patients and 11 healthy individuals during a seated balancing task, in conditions with ...

this review covers some of the developments during this period. Just over twenty years ago J. R. M. Innes came to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and showed us some intriguing pictures of lambs with sway-back and suggested that here was a demyelinating disease which could be prevented by giving the ewes copper. Then, during the war, four workers studying sway-back developed themselve...

Background: Lumbosacral orthosis (LSO) is commonly used for the treatment of back pain. The clinical andmechanical effectiveness of this device has been repeatedly investigated in several studies; however, its sensorimotoreffectiveness has been rarely considered. Regarding this, the aim of the current study was to investigate the effect ofa non-extensible LSO on postural stabi...

Sensory information about body sway is used to drive corrective muscle action to keep the body's centre of mass located over the base of support provided by the feet. Loss of vision, by closing the eyes, usually results in increased sway as indexed by fluctuations (i.e. standard deviation, s.d.) in the velocity of a marker at C7 on the neck, s.d. dC7. Variability in the rate of change of centre...

INTRODUCTION Increased center of pressure excursions are well documented in patients with non-specific neck pain. While a linear relationship between pain intensity and postural sway has been described in low back pain patients, no such investigation has been conducted in adults with non-specific neck pain. METHODS Seventy patients with non-specific neck pain and a matching number of healthy ...

OBJECTIVE To identify the subtle change of postural control in elderly patients with unilateral knee osteoarthritis (OA) with computerized dynamic posturography. METHOD Twenty-two healthy women and twenty-six women with unilateral knee OA, aged 60 and over, were enrolled. The computerized posturographic measures included a weight bearing pattern during squatting and sit-to-stand, sway velocit...

Everyday activities like walking and talking can put an older adult at risk for a fall if they have difficulty dividing their attention between motor and cognitive tasks. Training studies have demonstrated that both cognitive and physical training regimens can improve motor and cognitive task performance. Few studies have examined the benefits of combined training (cognitive and physical) and w...

PURPOSE The present study aimed at investigating the control of upright quiet standing in pregnant women throughout pregnancy, and whether low-back pain exerts influence on this motor task. METHODS Myoelectric signals from postural muscles and stabilometric data were collected from 15 non-pregnant and 15 pregnant women during upright quiet standing. Electromyogram envelopes and center of pres...