http://jneuroengrehab.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12984-016-0160-7
- Andrej OlenšekEmail authorView ORCID ID profile,
- Matjaž Zadravec and
- Zlatko Matjačić
Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation201613:55
DOI: 10.1186/s12984-016-0160-7
© The Author(s) 2016
Received: 15 February 2016
Accepted: 1 June 2016
Published: 11 June 2016
Abstract
Background
The most common approach to studying
dynamic balance during walking is by applying perturbations. Previous
studies that investigated dynamic balance responses predominantly
focused on applying perturbations in frontal plane while walking on
treadmill. The goal of our work was to develop balance assessment robot
(BAR) that can be used during overground walking and to assess normative
balance responses to perturbations in transversal plane in a group of
neurologically healthy individuals.
Methods
BAR provides three passive degrees of
freedom (DoF) and three actuated DoF in pelvis that are
admittance-controlled in such a way that the natural movement of pelvis
is not significantly affected. In this study BAR was used to assess
normative balance responses in neurologically healthy individuals by
applying linear perturbations in frontal and sagittal planes and angular
perturbations in transversal plane of pelvis. One way repeated measure
ANOVA was used to statistically evaluate the effect of selected
perturbations on stepping responses.
Results
Standard deviations of assessed
responses were similar in unperturbed and perturbed walking.
Perturbations in frontal direction evoked substantial pelvis
displacement and caused statistically significant effect on step length,
step width and step time. Likewise, perturbations in sagittal plane
also caused statistically significant effect on step length, step width
and step time but with less explicit impact on pelvis movement in
frontal plane. On the other hand, except from substantial pelvis
rotation angular perturbations did not have substantial effect on pelvis
movement in frontal and sagittal planes while statistically significant
effect was noted only in step length and step width after perturbation
in clockwise direction.
Conclusions
Results indicate that the proposed
device can repeatedly reproduce similar experimental conditions. Results
also suggest that “stepping strategy” is the dominant strategy for
coping with perturbations in frontal plane, perturbations in sagittal
plane are to greater extent handled by “ankle strategy” while angular
perturbations in transversal plane do not pose substantial challenge for
balance. Results also show that specific perturbation in general
elicits responses that extend also to other planes of movement that are
not directly associated with plane of perturbation as well as to spatio
temporal parameters of gait.
No comments:
Post a Comment