Little is known about the small intrinsic foot muscles and their function during walking and running. In this video, Prof Andrew Creswell of the University of Queensland talks about the results of his research in which he has utilized imaging ultrasound and intramuscular electromyography to study the role of intrinsic […]
How we sense where our body is and what body parts belong to us is crucial for successful interaction with our environments (e.g. Proske & Gandevia 2012). It might seem silly to ask whether a body part belongs to you or someone else, however studies of patients and studies that […]
As we get older, we lose muscle size and strength and become more vulnerable to injury (de Souto Barreto 2009; Fried et al. 2005). Each year, 1 in 3 individuals over 65 has a fall (Yoshida 2007), which often leads to fractures, hospital admissions and mortality. Strength and balance exercise […]
Motoneurones are nerve cells in the spinal cord that, when they fire, enable us to make muscle contractions and perform movements. Right now, for example, the motoneurones that control your eye muscles are firing as you move your eyes to read this text. When we exercise or perform strenuous […]
In young people with cerebral palsy, strength training increases the forces that their muscles produce. But does that mean that strength training helps young people with cerebral palsy walk better? Professor Nicholas Taylor talks about strength training and mobility in young people with cerebral palsy.
Several neuromodulatory strategies have been used to improve leg function in individuals with spinal cord injury. These strategies include: electrical stimulation of the lumbar spinal cord (Harkema et al. 2011), operant conditioning of spinal reflexes (Thompson et al. 2013), and magnetic stimulation of a part of the brain that controls […]
People with pain move differently. Why is this the case? Prof Paul Hodges talks about his research on muscle adaptations in people with pain.
It is well known that the nervous system is capable of change. One way that change occurs is through the strengthening or weakening of connections between nerve cells; a process termed synaptic plasticity. In the laboratory, we can produce synaptic changes using stimulation techniques that activate various parts of the […]
People who have had a stroke may develop disabling spasticity and contracture. In the upper limb, spasticity and contracture sometime manifest as a characteristic postural deformity: in standing, the relaxed arm is held with the shoulder adducted and internally rotated, the elbow flexed and pronated, and the wrist and fingers […]
How do we learn things? Sometimes learning occurs over many trials but other times it occurs after single episodes. The traditional view of learning has invoked Hebbian plasticity (Hebb 1949). Here, the concept is that “neurones that wire together, fire together”. Enhanced firing of a post-synaptic cell is thought to […]
