Synchronization of passive interpersonal light touch and body control responses during walking

 How long will it take to get your incompetent? doctor and hospital to get testing going in stroke subjects? I'm betting never; they don't even know of this research! The 10 meter walk test is very common in stroke patients rehab so easily researched IF THERE IS ANY COMPETENCE AT ALL!

Do you prefer your doctor, hospital and board of director's incompetence NOT KNOWING? OR NOT DOING?

Synchronization of passive interpersonal light touch and body control responses during walking

• Tsubasa Mitsutake,
• Hisato Nakazono,
• Takanori Taniguchi,
• Hisayoshi Yoshizuka &
• Maiko Sakamoto 

Abstract

Background

Passive interpersonal light touch (PILT) provides postural coordination cues to the body of a contact receiver through the fingertips of a contact provider. However, the manner in which the fingertip information of the PILT contact provider affects the gait performance of the contact receiver remains unclear. We aimed to investigate body control responses such as trunk sway and smoothness to PILT during walking to clarify the synchronization of fingertip–body movements in the context of the experience the PILT provider in body manipulation.

Methods

In total, 17 healthy volunteers (21.4 ± 1.1 years old, 9 females) performed 10-m walk tests under three conditions: walking without touch (NT), walking with PILT administered by contact provider with extensive rehabilitation experience in manual body manipulation (PILT_E), and walking with PILT administered by contact provider with no experience (PILT_N). A force sensor on the middle finger of the contact provider and inertial sensors on the third lumbar and seventh cervical spinous processes of the contact receiver were used to gather data pertaining to contact force, direction of motion, walking speed, triaxial root mean square, harmonic ratio (HR), autocorrelation, and phase locking value (PLV) to estimate the synchronization between the inertial and fingertip sensors for each condition.

Results

The PILT_E group showed significantly higher walking speed and HR values in the anteroposterior (AP) direction than those of the NT and PILT_N groups. Additionally, the PLVs were significantly higher in the mediolateral (ML) direction in the PILT_E group than in the PILT_N group. In contrast, applying PILT_E significantly reduced the PLVs in the AP direction compared with that observed for PILT_N.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that the fingertips of skilled contact provider and the shift in the center of gravity of the contact receiver synchronize in the ML direction, which affects walking speed and smooth movement of walking patterns because of increased HR in the AP direction. Additionally, physical responses during walking to PILT administered by contact providers may change depending on the experience of the contact providers. Thus, the quantification of touch skills may potentially aid in administering effective walking assistance.