Kinesiology Commons^™

Gaze During Turning In Older Adults, Kalina Mavrov

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

To navigate complex environments, our gaze needs to attenuate to locomotor tasks, such as walking and turning. Shifting gaze (i.e., rotation of the eyes and head), is important when moving through different environments. The aim of this study was to compare gaze anticipation during clinical tests and complex real-world locomotion. I hypothesized that older adults would shift their gaze in a new heading direction in anticipation of turns. I further predicted increased gaze anticipation in tasks that have a high demand for spatial orientation. Participants were asked to complete clinical tasks consisting of a 2-minute walk, figure-8, and 360-turning in …

Effects Of Aging On Patellofemoral Joint Stress During Stair Negotiation On Challenging Surfaces, Nicholas Lynn Hunt

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Patellofemoral pain is an incessant lower limb musculoskeletal disorder that may be underreported in older adults. During common locomotor activities, such as when negotiating stairs, older adults (over the age of 65 years) adopt knee biomechanics reported to increase patellofemoral pain. Negotiating stairs with a challenging surface, such as uneven or slick, may place greater demand on the knee and further exacerbate joint biomechanics related to PFJ stress. Yet, it is unknown if older adults exhibit increases in patellofemoral joint (PFJ) stress when negotiating stairs with challenging surfaces. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect …

Age-Related Changes In Corticospinal Drive During Locomotor Adaptation, Sumire D. Sato

Doctoral Dissertations

During activities of daily living, locomotor patterns must be continuously adapted according to changes in our body (e.g., bodily injuries, fatigue) and to the changing environment (e.g., walking surface). Plasticity of spinal networks and supraspinal centers, including the cerebellum and cerebral cortex, have been shown to play important roles in human locomotor adaptation. However, the neural control of locomotion and the ability to adapt locomotor patterns are altered in older adults, which may limit activities of daily living and increase fall-related injuries in the elderly population. My dissertation project is focused on understanding the role of corticospinal drive during split-belt …

These Fish Were Made For Walking: Morphology And Walking Kinematics In Balitorid Loaches, Callie Hendricks Crawford

Dissertations

Terrestrial excursions have been observed in multiple lineages of marine and freshwater fishes. These ventures into the terrestrial environment may be used when fish are searching out new habitat during drought, escaping predation, laying eggs, or seeking food sources. The physiological demands for life under water and on land are vastly different and require different functional adaptations. Fish with terrestrial excursions must be capable of dealing with the stresses of both aquatic and terrestrial environments for varying periods of time. To deal with these stresses, amphibious fishes exhibit many morphological and behavioral adaptations. These adaptations have led to a range …

The Biomechanical Energetics Of Terrestrial Locomotion In California Sea Lions (Zalophus Californianus): Efficiency Of Quadrupedal Galloping, Sarah Kerr

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Pinnipedia, an order of semi-aquatic marine mammals, adapted a body design that allows for efficient aquatic locomotion but limited terrestrial locomotion. Phocids (true seals) have reduced forelimbs and are unable to bring their hindlimbs beneath them during terrestrial locomotion. Otariids, like the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), have enlarged forelimbs and can bring their hindlimbs under the body to locomote quadrupedally on land. Due to these differences, phocids are expected to move on land with greater energetic costs compared to otariids. The mechanical costs of transport and power outputs of terrestrial locomotion were compared between the California sea …

Gait Complexity Is Acutely Restored In Older Adults When Walking To A Fractal-Like Visual Stimulus, Joao R. Vaz, Brian Knarr, Nicholas Stergiou

Journal Articles

Typically, gait rehabilitation uses an invariant stimulus paradigm to improve gait related deficiencies. However, this approach may not be optimal as it does not incorporate gait complexity, or in more precise words, the variable fractal-like nature found in the gait fluctuations commonly observed in healthy populations. Aging which also affects gait complexity, resulting in a loss of adaptability to the surrounding environment, could benefit from gait rehabilitation that incorporates a variable fractal-like stimulus paradigm. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effect of a variable fractal-like visual stimulus on the stride-to-stride fluctuations of older adults during overground walking. Additionally, …

To Walk Or To Run – A Question Of Movement Attractor Stability, Peter C. Raffalt, Jenny A. Kent, Shane R. Wurdeman, Nicholas Stergiou

Journal Articles

During locomotion, humans change gait mode between walking and running as locomotion speed is either increased or decreased. Dynamical systems theory predicts that the self-organization of coordinated motor behaviors dictates the transition from one distinct stable attractor behavior to another distinct attractor behavior (e.g. walk to run or vice versa) as the speed is changed. To evaluate this prediction, the present study investigated the attractor stability of walking and running across a range of speeds evoking both self-selected gait mode and non-self-selected gait mode. Eleven subjects completed treadmill walking for 3 min at 0.89, 1.12, 1.34, 1.56, 1.79, 2.01, 2.24 …

Scaling Of Swimming Performance In Baleen Whales, William T. Gough, Paolo S. Segre, K. C. Bierlich, David E. Cade, Jean Potvin, Frank E. Fish, Julian Dale, Jacopo Di Clemente, Ari S. Friedlaender, David W. Johnston, Shirel R. Kahane-Rapport, John Kennedy, John H. Long, Machiel Oudejans, Gwenith Penry, Matthew S. Savoca, Malene Simon, Simone K. A. Videsen, Fleur Visser, David N. Wiley, Jeremy O. Goldbogen

Biology Faculty Publications

The scale dependence of locomotor factors has long been studied in comparative biomechanics, but remains poorly understood for animals at the upper extremes of body size. Rorqual baleen whales include the largest animals, but we lack basic kinematic data about their movements and behavior below the ocean surface. Here, we combined morphometrics from aerial drone photogrammetry, whale-borne inertial sensing tag data and hydrodynamic modeling to study the locomotion of five rorqual species. We quantified changes in tail oscillatory frequency and cruising speed for individual whales spanning a threefold variation in body length, corresponding to an order of magnitude variation in …

Ankle And Midtarsal Joint Quasi-Stiffness During Walking With Added Mass, Andrew M. Kern, Nikolaos Papachatzis, Jeffrey M. Patterson, Dustin A. Bruening, Kota Z. Takahashi

Journal Articles

Examination of how the ankle and midtarsal joints modulate stiffness in response to increased force demand will aid understanding of overall limb function and inform the development of bio-inspired assistive and robotic devices. The purpose of this study is to identify how ankle and midtarsal joint quasi-stiffness are affected by added body mass during over-ground walking. Healthy participants walked barefoot over-ground at 1.25 m/s wearing a weighted vest with 0%, 15% and 30% additional body mass. The effect of added mass was investigated on ankle and midtarsal joint range of motion (ROM), peak moment and quasi-stiffness. Joint quasi-stiffness was broken …

Selection Procedures For The Largest Lyapunov Exponent In Gait Biomechanics, Peter C. Raffalt, Jenny A. Kent, Shane R. Wurdeman, Nicholas Stergiou

Journal Articles

The present study was aimed at investigating the effectiveness of the Wolf et al. (LyE_W) and Rosenstein et al. largest Lyapunov Exponent (LyE_R) algorithms to differentiate data sets with distinctly different temporal structures. The three-dimensional displacement of the sacrum was recorded from healthy subjects during walking and running at two speeds; one low speed close to the preferred walking speed and one high speed close to the preferred running speed. LyE_R and LyE_W were calculated using four different time series normalization procedures. The performance of the algorithms were evaluated based on their ability to return relative low values for slow …

The Effects Of Ankle Stiffness On Mechanics And Energetics Of Walking With Added Loads: A Prosthetic Emulator Study, Erica Hedrick, Philippe Malcolm, Jason M. Wilken, Kota Z. Takahashi

Journal Articles

Background: The human ankle joint has an influential role in the regulation of the mechanics and energetics of gait. The human ankle can modulate its joint ‘quasi-stiffness’ (ratio of plantarflexion moment to dorsiflexion displacement) in response to various locomotor tasks (e.g., load carriage). However, the direct effect of ankle stiffness on metabolic energy cost during various tasks is not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to determine how net metabolic energy cost was affected by ankle stiffness while walking under different force demands (i.e., with and without additional load).
Methods: Individuals simulated an amputation by using …

Biomimetic Design And Construction Of A Bipedal Walking Robot, Alexander Gabriel Steele

Dissertations and Theses

Human balance and locomotion control is highly complex and not well understood. To understand how the nervous system controls balance and locomotion works, we test how the body responds to controlled perturbations, the results are analyzed, and control models are developed. However, to recreate this system of control there is a need for a robot with human-like kinematics. Unfortunately, such a robotic testbed does not exist despite the numerous applications such a design would have in mobile robotics, healthcare, and prosthetics.

This thesis presents a robotic testbed model of human lower legs. By using MRI and CT scans, I designed …

Gait Stability Has Phase-Dependent Dual-Task Costs In Parkinson’S Disease, Peter C. Fino, Martina Mancini, Carolin Curtze, John G. Nutt, Fay B. Horak

Journal Articles

Dual-task (DT) paradigms have been used in gait research to assess the automaticity of locomotion, particularly in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). In people with PD, reliance on cortical control during walking leads to greater interference between cognitive and locomotor tasks. Yet, recent studies have suggested that even healthy gait requires cognitive control, and that these cognitive contributions occur at specific phases of the gait cycle. Here, we examined whether changes in gait stability, elicited by simultaneous cognitive DTs, were specific to certain phases of the gait cycle in people with PD. Phase-dependent local dynamic stability (LDS) was calculated for …

The Vestibular Contribution To Balance Control In Older Adults During Locomotion And Stair Negotiation, Megan Elwood

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Background: Stability is known to decrease as we age, but currently we know very little about how the body's balance system, the vestibular system, contributes to balance control in older adults, particularly while walking and climbing stairs. The purpose of this study was to take the first step in understanding vestibular contribution to balance control during locomotion and stair negotiation, and how this changes with age.

Methods: Ten young adults and six older adults ascended and descended a nine-step staircase 78 times and walked on a treadmill for 10 minutes to complete a total of 300 complete steps in …

Quantifying Gait Adaptability: Fractality, Complexity, And Stability During Asymmetric Walking, Scott W. Ducharme

Doctoral Dissertations

Successful walking necessitates modifying locomotor patterns when encountering organism, task, or environmental constraints. The structure of stride-to-stride variance (fractal dynamics) may represent the adaptive capacity of the locomotor system. To date, however, fractal dynamics have been assessed during unperturbed walking. Quantifying gait adaptability requires tasks that compel locomotor patterns to adapt. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the potential relationship between fractal dynamics and gait adaptability. The studies presented herein represent a necessary endeavor to incorporate both an analysis of gait fractal dynamics and a task requiring adaptation of locomotor patterns. The adaptation task involved walking asymmetrically on …

Burrowing And Walking Mechanisms Of North American Moles, Yi-Fen Lin

Doctoral Dissertations

Moles (Family Talpidae) are a classic example of extreme specialization, in their case highly derived forelimb morphologies associated with burrowing. Despite many observations of mole burrows and behaviors gathered in the field, we know very little about how and how well moles use their forelimbs to dig tunnels and to walk within the built tunnels to collect and transport food. The first chapter investigates the effect of soil compactness on two sympatric mole species under controlled laboratory conditions. My results demonstrate that increasing soil compactness impedes tunneling performance as evidenced by reduced burrowing speed, increased soil transport, shorter tunnels, shorter …

Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Walk With Altered Step Time And Step Width Variability As Compared With Healthy Control Subjects, Jennifer M. Yentes, Stephen I. Rennard, Kendra K. Schmid, Daniel Blanke, Nikolaos Stergiou

Journal Articles

Rationale: Compared with control subjects, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have an increased incidence of falls and demonstrate balance deficits and alterations in mediolateral trunk acceleration while walking. Measures of gait variability have been implicated as indicators of fall risk, fear of falling, and future falls.

Objectives: To investigate whether alterations in gait variability are found in patients with COPD as compared with healthy control subjects.

Methods: Twenty patients with COPD (16 males; mean age, 63.6 ± 9.7 yr; FEV1/FVC, 0.52 ± 0.12) and 20 control subjects (9 males; mean age, 62.5 ± 8.2 yr) walked for 3 …

Hallux Valgus Surgery Affects Kinematic Parameters During Gait, Jitka Klugarova, Miroslav Janura, Zdenek Svoboda, Zdenek Sos, Nicholas Stergiou, Miloslav Klugar

Journal Articles

Background

The aim of our study was to compare spatiotemporal parameters and lower limb and pelvis kinematics during the walking in patients with hallux valgus before and after surgery and in relation to a control group.

Methods

Seventeen females with hallux valgus, who underwent first metatarsal osteotomy, constituted our experimental group. The control group consisted of thirteen females. Kinematic data during walking were obtained using the Vicon MX system.

Findings

Our results showed that hallux valgus before surgery affects spatiotemporal parameters and lower limb and pelvis kinematics during walking. Hallux valgus surgery further increased the differences that were present before …

Turning Performance In Squid And Cuttlefish: Unique Dual-Mode, Muscular Hydrostatic Systems, Rachel A. Jastrebsky, Ian K. Bartol, Paul S. Krueger

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Although steady swimming has received considerable attention in prior studies, unsteady swimming movements represent a larger portion of many aquatic animals' locomotive repertoire and have not been examined extensively. Squids and cuttlefishes are cephalopods with unique muscular hydrostat-driven, dual-mode propulsive systems involving paired fins and a pulsed jet. These animals exhibit a wide range of swimming behavior, but turning performance has not been examined quantitatively. Brief squid, Lolliguncula brevis, and dwarf cuttlefish, Sepia bandensis, were filmed during turns using high-speed cameras. Kinematic features were tracked, including the length-specific radius of the turn (R/L), a measure of maneuverability, and …

Failures In Adaptive Locomotion In Healthy Young Adults, Michel J. H. Heijnen

Open Access Dissertations

Young adults fall most frequently when walking, and trips account for 25% of these falls (Heijnen & Rietdyk, 2016). Common approaches to understanding tripping include the examination of behavior when a stationary obstacle is crossed successfully, or to deliberately trip the participant with a covert obstacle. However, these approaches do not establish the underlying cause of failure; examining inadvertent failures does, as this occurs most often in the field (Heijnen & Rietdyk, 2016). In order to identify the behavior that results in obstacle contact, this dissertation examined gait characteristics during inadvertent failures and manipulated the sensory information available to guide …

An Investigation Of Lower-Extremity Functional Asymmetry For Non-Preferred Able-Bodied Walking Speeds, John Rice, Matthew K. Seeley

John R Rice

Functional asymmetry is an idea that is often used to explain documented bilateral asymmetries during able-bodied gait. Within this context, this idea suggests that the non-dominant and dominant legs, considered as whole entities, contribute asymmetrically to support and propulsion during walking. The degree of functional asymmetry may depend upon walking speed. The purpose of this study was to better understand a potential relationship between functional asymmetry and walking speed. We measured bilateral ground reaction forces (GRF) for 20 healthy subjects who walked at nine different speeds: preferred, +10%, +20%, +30%, +40%, -10%, -20%, -30%, and -40%. Contribution to support was …

Gait Mechanics In Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Jenna M. Yentes, Kendra K. Schmid, Daniel Blanke, Debra J. Romberger, Stephen I. Rennard, Nikolaos Stergiou

Journal Articles

Background

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by the frequent association of disease outside the lung. The objective of this study was to determine the presence of biomechanical gait abnormalities in COPD patients compared to healthy controls while well rested and without rest.

Methods

Patients with COPD (N = 17) and aged-matched, healthy controls (N = 21) walked at their self-selected pace down a 10-meter walkway while biomechanical gait variables were collected. A one-minute rest was given between each of the five collected trials to prevent tiredness (REST condition). Patients with COPD then walked at a self-selected pace on …

Sex Differences In Whole Body Gait Kinematics At Preferred Speeds, Dustin A. Bruening, R. Frimenko, C. Goodyear, A. Fullenkamp

Faculty Publications

Studies on human perception have identified pelvis and torso motion as key discriminators between male and female gaits. However, while most observers would advocate that men and women walk differently, consistent findings and explanations of sex differences in gait kinematics across modern empirical studies are rare. In the present study we evaluated sex differences in whole body gait kinematics from a large sample of subjects (55 men, 36 women) walking at self selected speeds. We analyzed the data through comparisons of discrete metrics and whole curve analyses. Results showed that in the frontal plane, women walked with greater pelvic obliquity …

The Locomotor Kinematics Of Asian And African Elephants: Changes With Speed And Size, John R. Hutchinson, Delf Schwerda, Daniel J. Famini, Robert H.I. Dale, Martin S. Fischer, Rodger Kram

Robert H. I. Dale

For centuries, elephant locomotion has been a contentious and confusing challenge for locomotion scientists to understand, not only because of technical difficulties but also because elephant locomotion is in some ways atypical of more familiar quadrupedal gaits. We analyzed the locomotor kinematics of over 2400 strides from 14 African and 48 Asian elephant individuals (body mass 116-4632 kg) freely moving over ground at a 17-fold range of speeds, from slow walking at 0.40 m s-1 to the fastest reliably recorded speed for elephants, 6.8 m s-1. These data reveal that African and Asian elephants have some subtle differences in how …

Multiple Sclerosis Alters The Mechanical Work Performed On The Body's Center Of Mass During Gait, Shane R. Wurdeman, Jessie M. Huisinga, Mary Filipi, Nikolaos Stergiou

Journal Articles

Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) have less-coordinated movements of the center of mass resulting in greater mechanical work. The purpose of this study was to quantify the work performed on the body’s center of mass by patients with MS. It was hypothesized that patients with MS would perform greater negative work during initial double support and less positive work in terminal double support. Results revealed that patients with MS perform less negative work in single support and early terminal double support and less positive work in the terminal double support period. However, summed over the entire stance phase, patients with …

Gait Variablility Is Altered In Older Adults When Listening To Auditory Stimuli With Differing Temporal Structures, Jeffrey P. Kaipust, Denise Mcgrath, Mukul Mukherjee, Nikolaos Stergiou

Journal Articles

Gait variability in the context of a deterministic dynamical system may be quantified using nonlinear time series analyses that characterize the complexity of the system. Pathological gait exhibits altered gait variability. It can be either too periodic and predictable, or too random and disordered, as it is the case with aging. While gait therapies often focus on restoration of linear measures such as gait speed or stride length, we propose that the goal of gait therapy should be to restore optimal gait variability, which exhibits chaotic fluctuations and is the balance between predictability and complexity. In this context, our purpose …

Temporal Structure Of Variability Reveals Similar Control Mechanisms During Lateral Stepping And Forward Walking, Shane R. Wurdeman, Nikolaos Stergiou

Journal Articles

Previous research exploring a lateral stepping gait utilized amount of variability (i.e. coefficient of variation) in the medial-lateral (ML) and anterior-posterior (AP) direction to propose that the central nervous system’s active control over gait in any direction is dependent on the direction of progression. This study sought to further explore this notion through the study of the temporal structure of variability which is reflective of the neuromuscular system’s organization of the movement over time. The largest Lyapunov exponent (LyE) of the reconstructed attractors for the foot’s movement in the AP and ML was calculated. Results revealed that despite the obvious …

The Appropriate Use Of Approximate Entropy And Sample Entropy With Short Data Sets, Jenna M. Yentes, Nathaniel Hunt, Kendra K. Schmid, Jeffrey P. Kaipust, Denise Mcgrath, Nikolaos Stergiou

Journal Articles

Approximate entropy (ApEn) and sample entropy (SampEn) are mathematical algorithms created to measure the repeatability or predictability within a time series. Both algorithms are extremely sensitive to their input parameters: m (length of the data segment being compared), r (similarity criterion), and N (length of data). There is no established consensus on parameter selection in short data sets, especially for biological data. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to examine the robustness of these two entropy algorithms by exploring the effect of changing parameter values on short data sets. Data with known theoretical entropy qualities as well as experimental …

Modeling Of Legged Locomotion With A Suspended Load In The Sagittal Plane, Karna P. Potwar

Open Access Theses

Walking or running while carrying loads has always been a tedious task, more so when the loads are heavy. Such a task of carrying loads not only requires extra effort but also leads to physical pain and in some cases injury. Prior studies on human locomotion with a suspended load have used models that are restricted in their DOFs and so are not able to take into account the fore aft movement in human beings. The objective of this thesis is to model the dynamics of sagittal plane center-of-mass locomotion with a suspended load and apply findings to carrying loads …

The Effect Of A Short Duration, High Intensity Exercise Intervention On Gait Biomechanics In Patients With Copd: Findings From A Pilot Study, Jenna M. Yentes, Daniel Blanke, Stephen I. Rennard, Nikolaos Stergiou

Journal Articles

Previous work has shown that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) demonstrate changes in their gait biomechanics as compared to controls. This pilot study was designed to explore the possibility that biomechanical alterations present in COPD patients might be amenable to treatment by exercise training of skeletal muscle. This study investigated the effect of a 6-week exercise intervention on gait biomechanics in patients with COPD under both a rest and a non-rested condition. Seven patients with COPD underwent a supervised cardio-respiratory and strength training protocol 2-3 times per week for 6-weeks for a total of 16-sessions. Spatiotemporal, kinematic and …