The objective of this thesis was to investigate the contributions of both the vestibular and foot/ankle somatosensory inputs to the mechanisms controlling lower limb muscular activity of normal human subjects. The standing subject was modelled as a single-link inverted pendulum, producing whole head-body tilts about an axis colinear with the ankle joints. / A paradigm was developed whereby the vestibular and the ankle proprioceptive afferent systems were systematically and selectively controlled or eliminated. There was a greater tendency for reflex response to be activated in the three lower limb muscles when the forward tilts had an acceleration larger than 1.4 g. This was found when the whole head-body tilts were delivered with minimal changes in ankle angle or a significant change in ankle angle from the neutral position towards dorsiflexion. Frequency of occurrence was greater for the more proximal muscle when there was minimal ankle dorsiflexion, and for one of the distal muscles when there was ankle dorsiflexion. The proximal hip extensor muscle tended to have the shortest latency during whole head-body tilts alone, while the most distal muscles had the shortest latency when the tilts occurred concomitantly with ankle rotation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.59541 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Lo Monaco, Emmanuel |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (School of Physical and Occupational Therapy.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001233527, proquestno: AAIMM63677, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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