Shoulder injuries may be associated with proprioceptive deficits, however, it is unknown whether these changes are due to the experience of pain, tissue damage, or a combination of these. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of experimentally-induced sub-acromial pain on proprioceptive variables. Sub-acromial pain was induced via hypertonic saline injection in 20 healthy participants. Passive joint replication (PJR) and threshold to detection of movement direction (TTDMD) were assessed with a Biodex System 3 Pro isokinetic dynamometer for baseline control, experimental pain and recovery control conditions with a starting position of 60° shoulder abduction. The target angle for PJR was 60° external rotation, starting from 40°. TTDMD was tested from a position of 20° external rotation. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to determine differences between PJR absolute and variable errors and TTDMD for the control and experimental conditions. Pain was elicited with a median 7 on the Numeric Pain Rating Scale. TTDMD was significantly decreased for the experimental pain condition compared to baseline and recovery conditions (≈30%, P=0.003). No significant differences were found for absolute (P=0.152) and variable (P=0.514) error for PJR. Movement sense was enhanced for the experimental sub-acromial pain condition, which may reflect protective effects of the central nervous system in response to the pain. Where decreased passive proprioception is observed in shoulders with injuries, these may be due to a combination of peripheral tissue injury and neural adaptations that differ from those due to acute pain.

Falls from heights are a major concern in the occupational setting, and are often the result of a loss of balance. Lumbar extensor fatigue (LEF) increases postural sway which has been associated with degradations in balance. Study one focuses on the effects of fatiguing time and fatigue level on the duration of these increases in postural sway. Measures of postural sway were collected before fatigue and at 3 minute intervals for 30 minutes following fatigue. LEF had a significant effect on postural sway immediately following fatigue but this effect had only minor dependence on fatigue condition. During the 30 minutes following fatigue, the effects of fatiguing time and fatigue level became more apparent. Longer fatiguing time and higher fatigue levels resulted in significantly greater prolonged effects. While it is important to understand the immediate effect of LEF on sway, this study has demonstrated that the prolonged effect of such fatigue should be considered when addressing falls from heights. Study two attempts to explain the increases in postural sway associated with LEF. The ankle plays a major role in upright standing and degradations in proprioception could contribute to increases in sway, thus the effect of LEF on ankle proprioception was studied. Additionally, the effect of circumferential ankle pressure (CAP) on ankle proprioception was assessed to evaluate it as a potential intervention to improve proprioception. Results showed that both LEF and CAP impaired proprioception. These results may help to explain observed increases in postural sway subsequent to LEF. / Master of Science

This study argues that the sensory order employed during everyday activities deepens our understanding of local people’s relations with the environment. This study was conducted in Larabanga, Ghana, employing anthropology of the senses and phenomenology. The study reveals that people acquire ways of doing things and organizing their lives through their sensory engagement with their environment. Their engagement is further highlighted by the way they make themselves a home in their environment which informs about these sensory orders.

This study argues that the sensory order employed during everyday activities deepens our understanding of local people’s relations with the environment. This study was conducted in Larabanga, Ghana, employing anthropology of the senses and phenomenology. The study reveals that people acquire ways of doing things and organizing their lives through their sensory engagement with their environment. Their engagement is further highlighted by the way they make themselves a home in their environment which informs about these sensory orders.

This study argues that the sensory order employed during everyday activities deepens our understanding of local people’s relations with the environment. This study was conducted in Larabanga, Ghana, employing anthropology of the senses and phenomenology. The study reveals that people acquire ways of doing things and organizing their lives through their sensory engagement with their environment. Their engagement is further highlighted by the way they make themselves a home in their environment which informs about these sensory orders.

Au quotidien, notre système nerveux central utilise et intègre de multiples informations sensorielles pour percevoir de façon cohérente et efficace les mouvements de notre corps et de nos membres. Une littérature abondante a décrit chacune des contributions des entrées sensorielles visuelle, proprioceptive musculaire ou encore tactile dans l’émergence de cette perception, appelée kinesthésie. Mais des questions demeurent quant aux principes régissant l’intégration de ces différents sens à des fins kinesthésiques. Cette thèse apporte des éléments de réponse en soulignant la contribution majeure de la proprioception musculaire dans la construction des percepts multisensoriels kinesthésiques chez l’adulte jeune. Compte tenu du déclin de toutes les modalités sensorielles au cours du vieillissement, nous avons étudié l’évolution possible de ces règles d’intégration dans la dernière partie de ce travail.Revisitant un phénomène illusoire classiquement considéré comme d’origine purement visuelle, le paradigme miroir, nous montrons tout d’abord l’influence des afférences proprioceptives musculaires controlatérales dans l’estimation visuo-proprioceptive des mouvements d’un segment corporel, le bras. En effet, nos résultats montrent que cette illusion de mouvement d’un bras caché derrière un miroir, crée par la réflexion du bras controlatéral en mouvement dans ce miroir, émerge de la prise en compte des informations visuelles mais également des afférences proprioceptives bilatérales. Dans un deuxième temps, pour estimer plus précisément les contributions relatives et interactions entre différentes modalités, nous appliquons des stimulations sensorielles spécifiques des entrées visuelles, tactiles et/ou proprioceptives musculaires, induisant des sensations illusoires de mouvement de la main chez des sujets parfaitement immobiles. En combinant méthode psychophysique et modélisation bayésienne, nous démontrons que l’intégration des informations visuelles et tactiles permet d’optimiser la capacité à discriminer la vitesse des mouvements de la main ; Toutefois, la perception kinesthésique demeure biaisée en faveur des informations proprioceptives musculaires chez des sujets adultes jeunes. Enfin, dans une perspective développementale, nous mettons en évidence un changement de pondération relative entre ces trois différentes entrées au cours du vieillissement en faveur des afférences d’origine tactile et visuelle, probablement dû à une altération plus importante de la sensibilité proprioceptive musculaire. / In our daily live, our central nervous system uses and integrates multiples sensory information to efficiently and accurately perceive self-body and self-limb movements. An important part of the studies on this perception, called kinesthesia, address the question of the multisensory integration principles in this particular perceptive domain. This thesis brings up some answers to this question, enlightening muscle proprioception major contribution to the elaboration of multisensory kinesthetic percepts in young adults and changes occurring with age in the rules governing the integration of vision touch and muscle proprioception in kinesthesia.Revisiting a classical illusory phenomenon implicitly supposed of visual origin, the mirror paradigm, we investigate how the contralateral muscle proprioceptive afferences contribute to the visuo-proprioceptive estimation of self-arm movements. Indeed, the movement illusion of an arm, hidden behind a mirror, created by the reflection of the contralateral arm moving in this mirror seems to emerge from the integration of visual and bilateral proprioceptive feedbacks, as attested by our results. Then, in order to estimate the relative contribution and interaction of vision, touch, and muscle proprioception, we applied specific sensory stimulations on muscle proprioception, touch and/or vision. These stimulations elicit in perfectly still participants self-hand movement illusions. Combining psychophysics and Bayesian approach, we demonstrate that visual and tactile cue integration leads to an optimization of our ability to discriminate self-hand rotation velocity. Nevertheless, kinesthesia remains biased in favor of proprioceptive cues. Finally, knowing that all sensory systems decline across life span, we study the potential evolution of multisensory integration rules in kinesthesia with age. We show a profound reshaping in the weighting of the three sensory entries in older individuals, in favor of touch and vision, probably due to a relative greater impairment of muscle proprioception.

Musik och rörelser har sedan urminnes tider varit nära bundna via dansen, men detta sambandet har för det mesta varit endimensionellt i den mening att en eller fler människor som reagerar till musik eller ljud av något slag. Här har vi sett att det finns ett intressant rumsligt, interaktivt och sinnligt utforskande att göra. Via ambisonics, en teknik för att panorera ljud i tre dimensioner och en Kinect kamera har vi utforskat vad som sker när en vänder på detta sambandet och låter ljudet reagera till människans rörelse istället. Men här finns mer att utforska än bara sambandet mellan musik och dans. En av de för oss mest intressanta delarna har varit hur det går att utveckla en ljudinstallation där ljuden som spelas upp motsvarar rörelserna som skapar dem. Med sensory ethnography som perspektiv har vi under ett antal workshops tillsammans med personer med en bakgrund inom dans och uppträde undersökt vilken roll kinestesi och agens har i detta möte mellan rörelse och ljud. Vad vi funnit utifrån diffrakterande analys är hur agens, förkunskap och precision spelar stor roll för upplevelsen av kontroll i en installation som våran; men även hur rumsligt utforskande och lekfullhet kan träda fram när ovannämnda kriterier uteblir. / Music and motion have shared an intimate connection through dance since ages past, however this bond has for the most part been one dimensional in the sense that people are the ones reacting to music. This connection is something we have found intriguing to explore through the aspects of interactivity, spaciousness and sensory experience. Using ambisonics, a technology used to recreate three dimensional sound fields and a Kinect camera, we have sought out to investigate what happens if you reverse this connection and let audio react to a person's movement instead. There is however more to this than just the bond between dance and music. One of the more interesting aspects has been how an audio installation can be developed to play back audio that corresponds to the movements that generate them. We have through the usage of sensory ethnography as our exploratory perspective enacted a number of workshops where we, together with people with a background in dance and performance, investigated the role that kinaesthesia and a person's sense of agency has in this interconnection of motion and sound. What we have found is how agency, precognition and precision plays a vital role in how well the sense of control is experienced in an installation such as ours; but also how a more spacious and playful exploration can emerge when the above mentioned criterias are absent.

Chronic neck-shoulder pain is associated with impairments of proprioception and motor control. Thus, assessment of proprioceptive and motor function may be powerful tools both for research and clinical practice. However, insufficient knowledge of certain features of human sensorimotor control hampers both development and interpretation of results of clinically relevant tests. For example, evidence is lacking which proprioception submodalities are reflected in common tests of proprioception. For testing motor function, a better understanding of the control of goal directed arm movements is needed. The purpose of the thesis was to gain further insights into the sensorimotor control of the upper limb in healthy subjects, with implications for clinical testing. The main aims were: (1) to study relationships of outcomes of different tests of shoulder proprioception and (2) to study control strategies in bimanual pointing tasks by analysis of the structure of joint angle variability with the Uncontrolled Manifold (UCM) method. Correlations between proprioceptive acuity in different variants of ipsilateral position-matching and velocity-discrimination were studied. The main finding was that two uncorrelated mechanisms based either on perception of position or movement might underlie perception of limb location in ipsilateral position-matching. The results provided important information for interpretation of common and development of novel tests of shoulder proprioception. The structure of joint angle variance was computed with respect to several task variables during bimanual pointing. Joint angle variability was decomposed in variance affecting and not affecting a task variable. The results showed that the variance in joint space was structured according to the predictions of the UCM hypothesis. It was also shown that the arms were united into one synergy to significantly larger degree than joints within each arm were united into single-arm synergies. It was concluded that the UCM approach might quantify components of motor variability during repetitive motor tasks.

The purpose of this project is to argue that we possess a minimal self. It will demonstrate that minimal selfhood arrives early in our development and continues to remain and influence us throughout our entire life. There are two areas of research which shape my understanding of the minimal self: phenomenology and enactivism. Phenomenology emphasizes the sense of givenness, ownership, or mineness that accompanies all of our experiences. Enactivism says there is a sensorimotor coupling that occurs between us and the environment in a way which modulates the dynamic patterns of our self development; the laying down of these basic patterns helps make us who we are and gives rise to the phenomenological, experiential mineness. Drawing on these two core ideas, I will be arguing for a Phenomenological-Enactive Minimal Self (abbreviated PEMS). I will be emphasizing the role of the body and the role of affects (moods, feelings, and emotions) as the most important components relevant to understanding minimal selfhood. Put more concretely, the set of conditions which constitute the PEMS view are: (i) The minimal self is the experiential subject; the minimal sense of self is present whenever there is awareness. It is the subjectivity of experience, the sense of mineness, or givenness which our experiences contain. (ii) The phenomenological part of the PEMS view turns on the idea of a bodily and dynamic integration of sensorimotor coupling and affective experience. It is, ontologically speaking, the lived body in enactive engagement with the environment. It is this embodied subject which anchors and forms the foundation for the later ‘narrative' self, which emerges from it and which is continually influenced by it. It is the subject enactively engaged with others, dependent on sensorimotor processes and affects. We have an identity, but it emerges from relational and dynamic processes.

This study investigates movement as a phenomenon of constituting directedness in the Canadian writer Rudy Wiebe’s Mennonite novels. In Peace Shall Destroy Many (1962), in The Blue Mountains of China (1970), and in Sweeter Than All the World (2001), the phenomenon of movement is complexly at work as a decisive factor on numerous levels of constitution. Employing the concept of phenomenological directedness, the study elucidates phenomena central to the kinetic-kinaesthetic materiality of the three works. Focusing on textual nuances of kinaesthetic accentuation, the investigation highlights ways in which directedness shapes subjectivity rather than vice versa. Kinetic reality emerges as something torn between distance as a separating interval and distance as a remote intimacy manifesting an elision of the span between source-point and terminus. Such discrepancy shapes a sense of existential inconsecutiveness, in which an intriguing diminishment of feeling is a heightening of the affective life. This state of affairs is frequently aligned with faith as world-withdrawal. The wandering of persecuted believers is a theological process that at any given time can reduce itself to an external, purely geographic enterprise, thus becoming a substitute for faith. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of perpetual travel has the capacity to produce an overarching bonding-affect at the constituting heart of a community whose kinetic life is inseparable from the movement of regeneration.