Naomichi Mizuta and Shu Morioka, Ph.D. students at Kio University Graduate School, have clarified that temporal asymmetry during walking in stroke patients is associated with muscle synergy.
Many stroke patients have impaired walking ability, which is thought to be influenced by abnormal lower limb muscle activity patterns.The lower limb muscle activity pattern during walking is controlled by "muscle synergy", which is a mechanism that lowers and controls many muscles, and that muscle synergy disorder affects walking ability in stroke patients, muscle synergy disorder and walking. It has also been clarified by the researchers that the kinematic characteristics of time are related.
However, the relationship between muscle synergy disorders and temporal characteristics during walking has not been clarified.Therefore, this time, we conducted a gait test experiment targeting stroke patients, which mainly manipulates time factors by using rhythm and auditory stimuli together during gait, and investigated the relationship between temporal characteristics and muscle synergies during gait.
Under the combined condition of rhythm and auditory stimulation, we asked them to walk while adjusting the tempo of the metronome to the ground contact timing of the lower limbs.Under these conditions, the peak lower limb flexion angle and the paralyzed side single leg support time increased, and the temporal asymmetry improved.At this time, the monotony of muscle synergies was decreasing.In addition, the change in cadence (difference from comfortable walking conditions) and the support time of the paralyzed single leg when combined with rhythm and auditory stimulation was found to correlate with the monotonous change in muscle synergy.
From the above, it was clarified that the temporal asymmetry during walking is related to the muscle synergy.In the future, the aim is to elucidate the neural mechanism of muscle synergy disorders and to clarify the recovery process of muscle synergy disorders that stroke patients follow.
