Quantifying changes following spinal cord injury with velocity dependent locomotor measures

Neckel, Nathan D.; Dai, Haining; Bregman, Barbara S.

doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2013.01.008

Cited by 18 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Stride length, step length, step width, and limb duty factor are highly correlated to walking speed; thus, accounting for velocity is absolutely essential 3, 35, 36 . This can be done through statistical models 8 , comparisons to controls 8–10, 25, 37 , or by controlling velocity with treadmill 29, 31, 38–40 .…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Characterizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gait analysis methods for rodent models of arthritic disorders: reviews and recommendations

Lakes

Allen

2016

Osteoarthritis and Cartilage

118

110

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Gait analysis is a useful tool to understand behavioral changes in preclinical arthritis models. While observational scoring and spatiotemporal gait parameters are the most widely performed gait analyses in rodents, commercially available systems can now provide quantitative assessments of spatiotemporal patterns. However, inconsistencies remain between testing platforms, and laboratories often select different gait pattern descriptors to report in the literature. Rodent gait can also be described through kinetic and kinematic analyses, but systems to analyze rodent kinetics and kinematics are typically custom made and often require sensitive, custom equipment. While the use of rodent gait analysis rapidly expands, it is important to remember that, while rodent gait analysis is a relatively modern behavioral assay, the study of quadrupedal gait is not new. Nearly all gait parameters are correlated, and a collection of gait parameters is needed to understand a compensatory gait pattern used by the animal. As such, a change in a single gait parameter is unlikely to tell the full biomechanical story; and to effectively use gait analysis, one must consider how multiple different parameters contribute to an altered gait pattern. The goal of this article is to review rodent gait analysis techniques and provide recommendations on how to use these technologies in rodent arthritis models, including discussions on the strengths and limitations of observational scoring, spatiotemporal, kinetic, and kinematic measures. Recognizing rodent gait analysis is an evolving tool, we also provide technical recommendations we hope will improve the utility of these analyses in the future.

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Section: Spatiotemporal Characterizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gait analysis methods for rodent models of arthritic disorders: reviews and recommendations

Lakes

Allen

2016

Osteoarthritis and Cartilage

118

110

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“…The fact that the left hindlimb, with less interruption of supraspinal drive (C4/5 over-hemisection leaves rubriospinal and reticulospinal tracts intact on the left side) is the limb to exhibit a greater deviation from pre-injury, and not until several weeks after injury, is of no surprise. In our previous analysis of overground locomotion of a subset of these animals we concluded that the less impaired limbs, with their greater level of control and range of motion, will adopt abnormal gait patterns in an effort to enable the more impaired limbs to complete an effective step [ 11 , 12 ]. And because this change in left limb stepping does not happen until several weeks after injury, we believe this is further evidence of the development of a compensatory technique in the left hindlimb following a cervical over-hemisection injury.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Neither food deprivation nor food rewards were used as motivators. These animals are part of our ongoing robotic gait training studies, and 74 of these animals were previously reported in our overground locomotion work [ 11 , 12 ]. Presented here for the first time is novel analysis of BWSTT data.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel spatiotemporal analysis of gait changes in body weight supported treadmill trained rats following cervical spinal cord injury

Neckel

2017

J NeuroEngineering Rehabil

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BackgroundCommon gait measures such as stride length, cycle time, and step height are not independent variables, but different aspects of the same multidimensional step. This complicates comparisons between experimental groups. Here we present a novel multidimensional gait analysis method and use this method to assess the ability of body weight supported treadmill training (BWSTT) to improve rodent stepping after spinal cord injury (SCI).MethodsIn lieu of reducing a step to a collection of gait measures and comparing the means of several of these, we developed a multidimensional analysis technique that compares the step as a whole. While in a passive robotic gait training device, the pre-injury hindlimb stepping of 108 rats was recorded while they walked in a quadrupedal posture at 8 cm/s. Following a C4/5 over-hemisection spinal cord injury the weekly changes in stepping were tracked for 17 untrained and 10 BWSTT animals for 7 weeks. The performance of trained rats was recorded during training with BWS, as well as at the end of the training week without BWS. An additional six uninjured rats were trained for 5 weeks.ResultsOur novel multidimensional analysis shows that stepping is asymmetrically altered 1 week after SCI. The differences in stepping change over the following weeks, with the less impaired left hindlimb deviating further away from pre-injury than the more impaired right hindlimb. Uninjured rats do not significantly alter their stepping over 5 weeks. BWSTT improves the stepping of the right hindlimb, but only when the BWS is active. If the BWS is not present, the performance of trained animals is worse than untrained rats. The left hindlimb performance of BWSTT rats is worse than untrained rats, during both training sessions and weekly assessments.ConclusionsWe feel that our novel multidimensional analysis is a more appropriate method to address the inter-dependencies of gait measures. Untrained rats exhibit both initial impairments as well as the development of compensatory techniques. BWSTT does not improve this spontaneous recovery, but exacerbates it, particularly in the less impaired left hindlimb.

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“…Recent publications reveal the association of several factors on gait parameters, such as body size (Heglund et al, 1974; Taylor, 1978; Machado et al, 2015), sex (Datto et al, 2016), strain, and locomotion speed (Taylor, 1978; Webb et al, 2003; Koopmans et al, 2007; Neckel et al, 2013; Machado et al, 2015; Neckel, 2015). Although the body size of rodents might influence gait analysis, the scaling of these parameters is not yet common in rodent gait analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silhouette-Length-Scaled Gait Parameters for Motor Functional Analysis in Mice and Rats

Timotius

Moceri

Plank

et al. 2019

eNeuro

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Significance Statement Body size corresponds to gait parameters in both human and rodents. Using image-processing approaches, we computed the silhouette length of the rodent and demonstrated that it is correlated to the stride length, body speed, and swing speed. Subsequently, as a proof of concept, we used the resulting silhouette length for the scaling/normalization of these gait parameters of two rodent models for neurodegenerative disorders, namely Parkinson's disease-relevant rat model and Huntington disease-relevant mouse model. Genotype-related alterations for silhouette length, stride length, body speed, and swing speed became smaller by applying our body silhouette-length-based scaling. In general, this silhouettelength-based gait parameter scaling is necessary for gait analysis in rodents, especially in studies involving young rodents, in preclinical longitudinal studies, and in studies with genotype-related body size difference. Methods/New Tools November/December 2019, 6(6) ENEURO.0100-19.2019 1-15 Gait analysis of transgenic mice and rats modeling human diseases often suffers from the condition that those models exhibit genotype-driven differences in body size, weight, and length. Thus, we hypothesized that scaling by the silhouette length improves the reliability of gait analysis allowing normalization for individual body size differences. Here, we computed video-derived silhouette length and area parameters from a standard markerless gait analysis system using image-processing techniques. By using length-and area-derived data along with body weight and age, we systematically scaled individual gait parameters. We compared these different scaling approaches and report here that normalization for silhouette length improves the validity and reliability of gait analysis in general. The application of this silhouette length scaling to transgenic Huntington disease mice and Parkinson´s disease rats identifies the remaining differences reflecting more reliable, body length-independent motor functional differences. Overall, this emphasizes the need for silhouette-length-based intra-assay scaling as an improved standard approach in rodent gait analysis.

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Quantifying changes following spinal cord injury with velocity dependent locomotor measures

Cited by 18 publications

References 22 publications

Gait analysis methods for rodent models of arthritic disorders: reviews and recommendations

Gait analysis methods for rodent models of arthritic disorders: reviews and recommendations

Novel spatiotemporal analysis of gait changes in body weight supported treadmill trained rats following cervical spinal cord injury

Silhouette-Length-Scaled Gait Parameters for Motor Functional Analysis in Mice and Rats

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