Identifying intrinsic and reflexive contributions to low-back stabilization

Identifying intrinsic and reflexive contributions to low-back stabilization

Van Drunen, P.
Maaswinkel, E.
Van der Helm, F.C.T.
Van Dieën, J.H.
Happee, R.

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Biomechanical Engineering

2013-04-09

Motor control deficits have been suggested as potential cause and/or effect of a-specific chronic low-back pain and its recurrent behavior. Therefore, the goal of this study is to identify motor control in low-back stabilization by simultaneously quantifying the intrinsic and reflexive contributions. Upper body sway was evoked using continuous force perturbations at the trunk, while subjects performed a resist or relax task. Frequency response functions (FRFs) and coherences of the admittance (kinematics) and reflexes (sEMG) were obtained. In comparison with the relax task, the resist task resulted in a 61% decrease in admittance and a 73% increase in reflex gain below 1.1 Hz. Intrinsic and reflexive contributions were captured by a physiologically-based, neuromuscular model, including proprioceptive feedback from muscle spindles (position and velocity) and Golgi tendon organs (force). This model described on average 90% of the variance in kinematics and 39% of the variance in sEMG, while resulting parameter values were consistent over subjects.

Lumbar Spine
postural control
system identification
muscle spindles
Golgi tendon organ

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b36e3335-d85a-4953-9416-f852514b75f1

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiomech.2013.03.007

Elsevier

0021-9290

Journal of Biomechanics, 46 (8), 2013

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) 2013 Elsevier
Open access under the Elsevier OA license