Patients with corticospinal tract dysfunction have slow voluntary movements with brisk stretch reflexes and spasticity. Previous studies reported reduced firing rates of motor units during voluntary contraction. To assess whether this firing behavior occurs because motor neurons do not respond normally to excitatory inputs, we studied motor units in patients with primary lateral sclerosis, a de...

Vibration is an excitatory stimulus for both vestibular and proprioceptive afferents. Vibration applied either to the skull or to the neck muscles of subjects after unilateral vestibular deafferentation induces nystagmus and a shift of the subjective visual horizontal. Previous studies have ascribed these effects to vibratory stimulation of neck muscle proprioceptors. Using scleral search coils...

Turbomachinery shafting and casings typically experience axial growth during thermal transients occurring at startup, shutdown, and changes of load. This growth does not usually present difficulties during operation. However, this paper discusses four recent turbomachinery trains that experienced radial subsynchronous vibration resulting from axial misalignment. In each example, the train inclu...

a finite element analysis is presented for sloshing and impulsive motion of liquid-filled conical tanks during lateral anti-symmetric excitation. the performed analyses led to the development of a number of charts which can be used to identify the natural frequency, the mode shapes of conical tanks for both fundamental and the cos(θ)-modes of vibration. conical tank geometry was described with ...

We analyzed human postural responses to muscle vibration applied at four different frequencies to lower leg muscles, the lateral gastrocnemius (GA) or tibialis anterior (TA) muscles. The muscle vibrations induced changes in postural orientation characterized by the center of pressure (CoP) on the force platform surface on which the subjects were standing. Unilateral vibratory stimulation of TA ...

A review of previous studies shows that there are two general views on how to determine demand in structures through incremental nonlinear static analysis. In the first view, multi-modal methods are used to determine demand in structures. In this view, the applied load pattern is applied to the structure according to the shape of each vibration mode, assuming that the structure deformation foll...

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of muscle vibration applied to the lower extremities on static postural balance of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). [Subjects] Seven subjects with Parkinson's disease participated in this study. [Methods] The oscillators of vibration were attached to the muscle bellies of the tibialis anterior, gastrocnemius, biceps femori...

The detection and recording of vibration emission from human joints, a technique which we have termed "vibration arthrography", is a sensitive, non-invasive method for the objective study of the locomotor system. Using vibration sensors attached to bony prominences around the knee, we studied the joints of both normal and symptomatic subjects. Normal subjects produced three signal types--physio...

Recently there has been indirect evidence suggesting that age-related elevation in footsole vibration detection may be associated with balance and gait dysfunction. As a first step in investigating this dysfunction, the current study determined by how much plantar vibration sensation decreases as a function of age, and if change is dependent on frequency and location of vibration application. V...