This article reports the use of electrical stimulation to provide paraplegic patients with complete lesions of the spinal cord the ability to rise from sitting to standing, to maintain a standing position, and to walk with a reciprocal gait. Four channels of electrical stimulation are sufficient for synthesis of a simple reciprocal gait pattern in these patients. During the double-stance phase,...

The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of centre of pressure (COP) and centre of mass (COM) fluctuations in ballet dancers standing quietly. Ten healthy young women performing classic ballet dance as recreational exercise (dancer group) and 10 healthy non-ballet dancers young women who were not ballet dancers (control group) participated in this study. Participants were in...

abstract   background: postural instability has been identified as a potential precursor of falls in elderly subjects. postural stability in quiet stance is commonly assessed with center of pressure (cop) measures. the purpose of this study was to determine testretest reliability and minimal detectable change (mdc) for the center of pressure (cop) measures in the elderly subjects.   methods: ei...

Active control of the mediolateral location of the feet is an important component of a stable bipedal walking pattern, although the roles of sensory feedback in this process are unclear. In the present experiments, we tested whether hip abductor proprioception influenced the control of mediolateral gait motion. Participants performed a series of quiet standing and treadmill walking trials. In s...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to determine the difference in activation patterns of the plantar intrinsic foot muscles during two quiet standing tasks with increasing postural difficulty. We hypothesised that activation of these muscles would increase with increasing postural demand and be correlated with postural sway. METHODS Intra-muscular electromyographic (EMG) activity was record...

Sway is reduced by light nonsupporting touch between parts of the body and a fixed surface. This effect is assumed to reflect augmentation of sensory cues for sway by point-of-contact reaction forces. It has been shown that movement of the contact surface can increase sway relative to an earth-fixed contact. Light touch contact with another person, for example, holding hands, affords a moving c...

Postural control is significantly affected by the postural base of support; however, the effects on postural adaptation are not well understood. Here we investigated how adaptation and transfer of anticipatory postural control are affected by stance width. Subjects made reaching movements in a novel dynamic environment while holding the handle of a force-generating robotic arm. Each subject ini...

  Abstract   Background: Postural instability has been identified as a potential precursor of   falls in elderly subjects. Postural stability in quiet stance is commonly assessed with   center of pressure (COP) measures. The purpose of this study was to determine testretest reliability and minimal detectable change (MDC) for the center of pressure   (COP) measures in the elderly subjects.   Met...

A single-subject, alternating treatments design was conducted to evaluate the effects of inhibitive ankle-foot orthoses on standing balance in a 4.5-year-old boy with moderate spastic quadriplegia who had been wearing an initial pair of inhibitive orthoses for one year. Before introducing the subject to a newly fabricated but similarly designed pair of orthoses, we collected baseline data on th...