The CNS and normal neuromuscular and musculoskeletal function Week 1 Flashcards
What are activities of daily living ?
Roles of different health professionals ?
What is locomotion ?
- Locomotion is the ability to move from one place to another. In humans, walking upright, or bipedally, is the most common method of locomotion.
- Walking involves all the joints of the lower limb and is characterised by an ‘inverted pendulum’ motion, in which the body vaults over the non-moving limb.
What is the gait cycle ?
Stages of Walking
The typical walk consists of a repeated gait cycle. The cycle itself contains two phases – a stance phase and a swing phase:
-Stance phase: Accounts for 60% of the gait cycle. It can be divided into the heel strike, support, and toe-off phases.
-Swing phase: Accounts for 40% of the cycle. It can be divided into the leg lift and swing phases.
Describe heel strike ?
In the heel-strike stage, the foot hits the ground heel first. Three muscles/muscle sets are involved, each acting at a different joint:
Gluteus maximus – acts on the hip to decelerate the forward motion of the lower limb.
Quadriceps femoris – keeps the leg extended at the knee and the thigh flexed at the hip.
Anterior compartment of the leg – maintains the ankle dorsiflexion, positioning the heel for the strike.
Describe support ? (gait cycle )
After the heel strike stage, the rest of the leading foot hits the ground, and the muscles work to cope with the force passing through the leg. This is known as the support stage.
-Quadriceps femoris – stabilises the knee in extension, supporting the weight of the body.
-Foot inverters and evertors – contract in a balanced manner to stabilise the foot.
-Gluteus minimus, gluteus medius and tensor fascia lata – abduct the lower limb. Their contraction keeps the pelvis level by counteracting the imbalance created from having most of the body weight on one leg
Describe Toe - off ?
In the toe-off phase, the foot prepares the leave the ground – heel first, toes last.
-Hamstring muscles – extends the thigh at the hip.
-Quadriceps femoris – maintains the extended position of the knee.
-Posterior compartment of the leg – plantarflexes the ankle. The prime movers include gastrocnemius, soleus and tibialis posterior
Describe the leg lift ?
Once the foot has left the ground, the lower limb is raised in preparation for the swing stage.
-Iliopsoas and rectus femoris – flexes the thigh at the hip, driving the knee forwards.
-Hamstring muscles – flexes the leg at the knee joint.
-Anterior compartment of the leg – dorsiflexes the ankle.
Describe the swing ?
In the swing phase, the raised leg is propelled forward. This is where the forward motion of the walk occurs.
-Iliopsoas and rectus femoris – keep the thigh flexed at the hip, resisting gravity as it tries to pull the lower extremity down.
-Quadriceps femoris – extends the leg at the knee, positioning the foot for landing.
-Anterior compartment of the leg – maintains ankle dorsiflexion so that the heel is in place for landing.
Next, the heel hits the ground, and the whole cycle repeats.
Conditions that alter gait ?
Conditions that alter gait ?
Gait abnormality ?
Pathological gaits ?
-When thinking of the locomotor system we rightly focus on the lower limbs. The legs. But do not forget that our upper limbs are used both for balance, but also have a role in running.
-We have the femur, tibia and fibula, tarsals of the ankle, metatarsals of the food, and then the phalanges of the digits. These are the bones of the lower limb.
-On their own these bones do nothing. There are a series of joints that help the bones to move.
-There are ball on socket joints, pivot joints, hinge joints and ellipsoidal joints. The form and shape of the joints determines the movement of the bones and whether they move in one, two or all 3 directions.
Muscles attach to bones ?
- However it is worth remembering that bones and joints on their own don’t move. They need forces applied to them, and this is where muscles come in. Muscles connect two (or more) bones. When muscles contract they produce forces. Because the force is being applied to bones which have joints this creates movement.
-The rotational forces that muscles produce on bones around a joint is known as torque.
There are different descriptions of muscles depending on how they function:
-Agonists cause a movement through their own contraction.
-Antagonist muscles oppose those same movements.
Probably the most commonly used example is the biceps and triceps, biceps contraction causes flexion at the elbow, the triceps contracting causes extension of arm at the elbow.
Synergist Muscles:
-However we also have synergist muscles that help to perform the same motion as the agonist. In our arm example, we have the brachialis that also helps flexion of the elbow.
-Typically when talking about muscles contracting we think about muscles shortening, or concentric contractions. For example if you are weight lifting and doing biceps curls, to lift the weight up you contract your biceps, the muscles shortens and bulges and your arm moves up. However there is another form of contraction, where the muscle contracts as it lengthens. This is eccentric contraction.
Eccentric contraction: Usually this contraction is used to oppose a stronger force. If we go back to our biceps example, think about holding or carrying something. If you want to put it down carefully, you don’t just completely relax your biceps making your arms drop. You carefully control the extension of your arm and your biceps is contracting as it lengthens. Try it!
Position of muscle affects power and speed
Also appreciate that we can change how muscles function by just changing where the muscles originate and insert. If we move a muscle nearer or further from a joint you can change the moment arm of that muscle. The further away you move the muscle the larger the moment arm, the larger the moment, the more turning force or torque that muscle produces around that joint. But, this tends to make the limb movement relatively slower. Think of a seesaw. The longer the side that we are trying to move, the more force it takes to move it, but the further it will move when it does. It is a tradeoff between force and speed.
We see this if we look at the forelimbs of a cheetah and a badger for example. A badger is designed for force, but a cheetah for speed, and we can see that with the position of the teres major muscle.
In our bodies our muscles tend to be optimised for force or speed. We might find synergistic muscles optimised differently, so one might do force, whilst the other might be for speed. By playing around with activations of these muscles we can modify our movements as required.
Ligaments and Tendons
- Tendons join muscle to bone
- Ligaments join bone to bone