dc.description.abstract |
The freedom of multitasking, walking, running, or playing sports requires an
unconscious awareness of our limbs locations and movements. Proprioception helps
provide this freedom, allowing us to recognize a limb's orientation in space without
visual cues. There are a number of sensory receptors located in the skin, muscles,
ligaments, tendons and joint capsules that send afferent sensory infonnation to the
central nervous system. This information is processed in the sensory-motor cortex,
where the brain interprets changes in muscle length and tension to determine a limb's
position. The brain sends efferent neural signals down the spinal cord providing motor
commands to change limb orientation, velocity or angle. Proprioception is critical for
balancing, preventing falls and generating reflexes. Any impairment to this process
can indicate disease, aging or injury. Therefore, having an accurate and precise device
to quantify proprioception is important for detecting changes in proprioception as well
as advancing further research of proprioception. The purpose of this study was twofold.
First, we sought to test the reliability of a Joint Position Sense (JPS) app on
assessing wrist proprioception. The second purpose was to test the hypothesis that the
angular errors in a joint position sense task would decrease as the degree of wrist
flexion increased. In this study, the repositioning errors did not improve with an
increase in degree of wrist flexion. However, the JPS app proves a valid and reliable
tool for assessing wrist proprioception. |
en_US |