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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Strategies of Balancing: Regulation of Posture as a Complex Phenomenon

Hilbun, Allison Leich 01 May 2016 (has links)
The complexity of the interface between the muscular system and the nervous system is still elusive. We investigated how the neuromuscular system functions and how it is influenced by various perturbations. Postural stability was selected as the model system, because this system provides complex output, which could indicate underlying mechanisms and feedback loops of the neuromuscular system. We hypothesized that aging, physical pain, and mental and physical perturbations affect balancing strategy, and based on these observations, we constructed a model that simulates many aspects of the neuromuscular system. Our results show that aging changes the control strategy of balancing from more chaotic to more repetitive. The chaotic elements ensure quick reactions and strong capacity to compensate for the perturbations; this adeptly reactive state changes into a less reactive, slower, probably less mechanically costly balancing strategy. Mental tasks during balancing also decreased the chaotic elements in balancing strategy, especially if the subject experienced chronic pain. Additional motoric tasks, such as tying knots while balancing, were correlated with age but unaffected by chronic pain. Our model competently predicted the experimental findings, and we proceeded to use the model with an external data set from Physionet to predict the balancing strategy of Parkinson’s patients. Our neurological model, comprised of RLC circuits, provides a mechanistic explanation for the neuromuscular system adaptations.

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