Neck muscle vibration makes walking humans accelerate in the direction of gaze

Abstract

We studied the effect of the continuous vibration of symmetrical dorsal neck muscles in seven normal subjects during (a) quiet standing, (b) stepping in place movements and (c) walking on the treadmill. The experiments were performed in a darkened room and the subjects were given the instruction not to resist the applied perturbation. In one condition the velocity of the treadmill was controlled by feedback from the subject's current position. Head, trunk and leg motion were recorded at 100 Hz. In normal standing, neck vibration elicited a prominent forward body sway. During stepping in place, neck vibration produced an involuntary forward stepping at about 0.3 m s−1 without modifying the stepping frequency. If the head was turned horizontally 45 and 90 deg to the right or to the left, neck muscle vibration caused stepping approximately in the direction of the head naso‐occipital axis. For lateral eye deviations, the direction of stepping was roughly aligned with gaze direction. In treadmill locomotion, neck vibration produced an involuntary step‐like increase of walking speed (by 0.1–0.6 m s−1), independent of the initial walking speed. During backward locomotion, the walking speed tended to decrease during neck vibration. Thus, continuous neck vibration evokes changes in the postural reference during quiet standing and in the walking speed during locomotion. The results suggest that the proprioceptive input from the neck is integrated in the control of human posture and locomotion and is processed in the context of a viewer‐centred reference frame.

The Effect of Cervical Spine Manipulation on Postural Sway in Patients With Nonspecific Neck Pain

“…The importance of cervical afferents has been eloquently demonstrated by experimental studies. These studies demonstrated that vibration of neck musculature in healthy individuals resulted in increased postural sway (40,41), gait disturbances (42,43) and reduced proprioceptive acuity of the neck and upper limb (44).…”

Neck Muscle Vibration and Spatial Orientation During Stepping in Place in Humans

“…Fukuda (1959) and Ushio et al (1976) reported that stepping on the spot was affected by static head inclination and neck torsion, respectively. Ivanenko et al (2000) showed that if the head is horizontally turned or the eyes are laterally rotated, vibration of dorsal neck muscles during stepping-in-place causes stepping in the direction of the naso-occipital axis or of the gaze, respectively. Preliminary findings from this laboratory have shown that lateral neck muscle vibration, applied during short distance walk on firm ground in the absence of vision, produces undershoot of target and deviation of gait trajectory toward the site opposite to vibration (Bove et al 2001).…”

The effects of neck muscular fatigue on static and dynamic postural control in elite male volleyball players

“…Eyvanakey et al (2004) also reported that Afferent posturals are process from neck muscles using visual field parameters (17). These affects are related to relation of cervical proprioceptive inputs to brain stem nuclei controlling the posture (such as Vestibulospinal Deiters) (15).…”