Effects of age and walking speed on coactivation and cost of walking in healthy adults

Peterson, Daniel S.; Martin, Philip E.

doi:10.1016/j.gaitpost.2009.12.005

Cited by 171 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The analysis of antagonist CAI during gait has been chiefly focused on the study of physiological aging (Hortobágyi et al, 2009;Peterson and Martin, 2010;Schmitz et al, 2009) and on some pathologies like stroke (Lamontagne et al, 2000), or knee osteoarthritis (Hubley-Kozey et al, 2009). Some of the above mentioned studies, and others (for example, Mian et al, 2006), evaluated CAI on thigh muscles.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the case of elderly some studies have provided conflicting results when trying to relate physiological aging to an increase in the CAI, and increments and decrements in the CAI in shank muscles when increasing velocity have been reported (Dietz et al, 1995;Hortobágyi et al, 2009;Peterson and Martin, 2010). One basic element to understand the increase in CAI when increasing velocity is to gain joint stability (Schmitz et al, 2009), and therefore aging, which is related to impairment in balance (Woollacott, 1993), would further increase the need for larger CAI.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, an increase in antagonist coactivation in the shank and thigh muscles, as a function of the gait velocity, has been reported (Hortobágyi et al, 2009;Schmitz et al, 2009). This suggests an adaptive process aimed at allowing greater stabilization around the joint (Peterson and Martin, 2010;Schmitz et al, 2009). This seems to be supported by the fact that aging can lead to loss of balance (Woollacott, 1993) and stability in gait (Hausdorff, 2007;Hausdorff et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, the larger amount of co-activation displayed by the elderly for a given velocity might contribute to further increase the stability. However, this explanation has been recently challenged since the relationship between aging and increased co-activation of antagonist calf muscles has not been confirmed (Peterson and Martin, 2010). Insight on the role of antagonist muscle co-activation in gait can be gained by evaluating other populations with postural instability, such as people suffering from Parkinson's disease, but very few studies have evaluated this feature in PD during gait (Dietz et al, 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have evaluated different patterns of gait: physiological gait (young and elderly subjects), and pathological gait (advanced PD during ON-dose, and OFF-dose; with and without FOG). The group of patients, with marked postural instability during gait, was included because increasing CAI seems an adaptive process to gain joint stability while walking (Peterson and Martin, 2010;Schmitz et al, 2009). Subjects were asked to walk in synchrony to a metronome beat.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Antagonist muscle co-activation during straight walking and its relation to kinematics: Insight from young, elderly and Parkinson's disease

et al. 2012

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Increased antagonist muscle co-activation of the lower limb during walking seems to be an adaptive process to the physiological changes of aging, in order to gain joint stability. In the healthy subjects this view seems to be reinforced by the fact that the co-activation index (CAI) increases when the gait is faster. The few reports on antagonist coactivation in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients indicate that they have larger co-activation than the healthy elderly, supporting the idea of the stabilization role of CAI during gait, as postural instability is a cardinal feature of PD. However it has also been reported that there is a reduction of the CAI when increasing velocity in PD or normal elderly. This questions the role of coactivation in stabilization during increased velocity. In this study we have analyzed the gait of healthy subjects (young and elderly), and PD patients (with and without freezing of gait, FOG) in order to better understand the relation between co-activation and gait kinematics, and to gain insight into the pathological changes associated with FOG in PD. We used Multiple Linear Regression models to study the relationship in shank muscles between CAI, velocity and cadence. Our results indicate that, for all groups of interest, the relationship between co-activation and the kinematics of gait is poor, due to the high degree of variability, questioning the explanatory value of the index.

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