The influence of posture, applied force and perturbation direction on hip joint viscoelasticity

TL;DR

This study estimates hip joint viscoelasticity during voluntary force control, revealing how factors like force magnitude, posture, and perturbation direction influence stiffness and viscosity, providing insights for neuromechanical modeling.

Contribution

Introduces a novel device to measure hip viscoelasticity during voluntary movement, highlighting the effects of force, posture, and perturbation direction on joint properties.

Findings

Hip stiffness and viscosity increase with applied force.

No difference in stiffness between dominant and non-dominant legs.

Perturbation direction slightly affects hip stiffness.

Abstract

Limb viscoelasticity is a critical factor used to regulate the interaction with the environment. It plays a key role in modelling human sensorimotor control, and can be used to assess the condition of healthy and neurologically affected individuals. This paper reports the estimation of hip joint viscoelasticity during voluntary force control using a novel device that applies a leg displacement without constraining the hip joint. The influence of hip angle, applied limb force and perturbation direction on the stiffness values was studied in ten subjects. No difference was detected in the hip joint stiffness between the dominant and non-dominant legs, but a small dependency was observed on the perturbation direction. Both hip stiffness and viscosity increased monotonically with the applied force magnitude, with posture to being observed to have a slight influence. These results are in line with previous measurements carried out on upper limbs, and can be used as a baseline for lower limb movement simulation and further neuromechanical investigations.