Gait disorders
Conditions
Interventions
During testing, participants will be required to walk in the exoskeleton for 27 trials of 40 seconds each. During each individual trial, a unique combination of gait speed, body weight support, and gu
body weight support: 0, 15, an 30% of the participants’ body weight
guidance: no guidance, moderate guidance, strong guidance). So in total, (3x3x3=) 27 trails of 40 seconds duration will be performed. Because shifts between different conditions may require some time
Sponsors
UMCG (Universitait Medisch Centrum Groningen)
Eligibility
Inclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria: In order to be eligible to participate in this study, a subject must meet all of the following criteria: Participants should be between 20 and 30 years of age.
Exclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria: Candidate participants that meet any of the following criteria will be excluded from participation in this study: 1. The participant suffers from neurological, orthopedic, visual, somatosensory or vestibular disorders, or any other disorder that is known to affect gait behavior or muscle activity; 2. Participants with skin diseases will also be excluded.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| 1. The obtained time normalized data will be used to construct a linear model (see Hof et al. 2002 and den Otter et al. 2004 for a similar approach) in which the relative contributions of (1) gait speed (2) BWS and (3) level of guidance and their mutual two-way interactions will be estimated. This type of analysis will result in plots that represent the changes in so-called neuromuscular gain due to a factor/interaction over the gait cycle. These plot will be used for visual assessment only, and not for statistical analysis; 2. For each muscle, the raw (i.e. not time normalized) data will be rectified (i.e. all measurement values will be made positive) and summed for each of the following subphases of the gait cycle: (1) the first double support phase, (2) the single support phase, (3) the second double support phase, and (4) the swing phase. These summed activities (µvolt) will be averaged over strides for each participant. This will allow us to conduct a separate repeated measures analysis for each subphase and each muscle; 3. The amplitude of rectified muscle activity will be evaluated for the 4 phases of the gait cycle, and compared between overground walking and walking in the Lokomat , using a oneway repeated measures analysis of variance. | — |
Contacts
Public ContactA.R. Otter, den
University of Groningen University Medical Center Groningen Center for Human Movement Sciences P.O. Box 196 A. Deusinglaan 1
Outcome results
None listed