Muscle coordination retraining inspired by musculoskeletal simulations reduces knee contact force.

ABSTRACT: Humans typically coordinate their muscles to meet movement objectives like minimizing energy expenditure. In the presence of pathology, new objectives gain importance, like reducing loading in an osteoarthritic joint, but people often do not change their muscle coordination patterns to meet these new objectives. Here we use musculoskeletal simulations to identify simple changes in coordination that can be taught using electromyographic biofeedback, achieving the therapeutic goal of reducing joint loading. Our simulations predicted that changing the relative activation of two redundant ankle plantarflexor muscles-the gastrocnemius and soleus-could reduce knee contact force during walking, but it was unclear whether humans could re-coordinate redundant muscles during a complex task like walk

SUBMITTER: Uhlrich SD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9262899 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature