Identifying intrinsic and reflexive contributions to low-back stabilization

Journal article (2013)
Department
Biomechanical Engineering (Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering) (TU Delft)
Copyright: Open access under the Elsevier OA license
DOI: https://doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.jbiomech.2013.03.007
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Published Date

09-04-2013

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Source:

Journal of Biomechanics, 46 (8), 2013

Faculty

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Department

Biomechanical Engineering

Abstract

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.