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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Center Of Mass Control And Multi-Segment Coordination In Children During And After Whole-Body Vibration, Huaqing Liang, Jianhua Wu
Center Of Mass Control And Multi-Segment Coordination In Children During And After Whole-Body Vibration, Huaqing Liang, Jianhua Wu
Physical Therapy Faculty Research
Maintaining upright posture under external perturbations requires the coordination between the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system, and it is a milestone of motor development in early childhood. Whole-body vibration (WBV) has acute effect on postural control and muscular activation during standing, resulting in an increased sway velocity and sway area of center-of-mass (COM), and the residual effect usually vanishes within 20 minutes after the vibration exposure. In quiet standing, a human body can be considered as a multi-segment linked system, and an uncontrolled manifold (UCM) approach has been used to examine how this multi-joint motor redundancy is utilized to …
Motor Strategy And Locomotor Adjustments In Children With And Without Down Syndrome While Negotiating Stairs, Huaqing Liang, Xiang Ke, Jianhua Wu
Motor Strategy And Locomotor Adjustments In Children With And Without Down Syndrome While Negotiating Stairs, Huaqing Liang, Xiang Ke, Jianhua Wu
Physical Therapy Faculty Research
Children with Down Syndrome (DS) often show impaired motor control, and walk with a slower speed and a shorter step length than typically developing (TD) children. When negotiating an obstacle, children with DS often stop for a longer duration, choose a more conservative crawling strategy and display a smaller toe clearance than their TD peers.
Effect Of Whole-Body Vibration On Center-Of-Mass Movement During Standing In Children And Young Adults, Huaqing Liang, Matthew Beerse, Xiang Ke, Jianhua Wu
Effect Of Whole-Body Vibration On Center-Of-Mass Movement During Standing In Children And Young Adults, Huaqing Liang, Matthew Beerse, Xiang Ke, Jianhua Wu
Physical Therapy Faculty Research
Whole body vibration (WBV) can affect postural control and muscular activation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the center-of-mass (COM) movement of children and young adults before, during, immediately after, and 5min after 40-s WBV in quiet standing. Fourteen young adults (mean age 24.5 years) and fourteen children (mean age 8.1 years) participated in the study. A full-body 35-marker set was placed on the participants and used to calculate COM. Forty-second standing trials were collected before, during, immediately after, and 5min after WBV with an frequency of 28Hz and an amplitude of <1mm. Two visual conditions were provided: eyes-open (EO) and eyes-closed (EC). COM variables included time-domain measures (average velocity, range, sway area and fractal dimension), frequency-domain measures (total power and median frequency), and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) scaling exponent in both anterior-posterior (AP) and medial-lateral (ML) directions. Results show that during WBV both children and adults increased average velocity and median frequency, but decreased range and the DFA scaling exponent. Immediately after WBV both groups increased the range, but showed pre-vibration values for most of the COM variables. Comparing to adults, children displayed a higher COM velocity, range, fractal dimension, and total power, but a lower DFA scaling exponent at all phases. The results suggest that both children and adults can quickly adapt their postural control system to WBV and maintain balance during and after vibration. Children display some adult-like postural control during and after WBV; however, their postural development continues into adolescence.