Sep 30, 2024 03:55 PM
https://theconversation.com/is-an-ankle-...oes-230416
EXCERPTS: Even though the damage of an ankle sprain happens at the ankle, there may also be some changes going on in the brain to how it well it senses pain or movement.
One of our doctoral students, Ashley Marchant, has shown something similar happens when we change how much weight (or load) we put on the muscles of the lower limb. The closer the load is to normal earth gravity, the more accurate our movement sense is; the lower the muscle load, the less accurate we get.
This work means we need to rethink how the brain controls and responds to movement. Historically, movement science has attempted to improve muscle function through resistance training, cardiovascular exercise and flexibility.
One of the big issues in the treatment and prevention of sport injuries is that even when the sports medicine team feels an athlete is ready to return, the risk of a future injury remains twice to eight times higher than if they’d never had an injury. This means sports medicos have been missing something.
[...] For example, developing a limp after a leg injury means the brain is receiving very different movement information from that leg’s movement patterns. With plasticity, this may mean the movement control pattern doesn’t return to an optimum pre-injury status.
As mentioned previously, a history of injury is the best predictor of future injury. This suggests something changes in the athlete’s movement control processes after injury – most likely in the brain – which extends beyond the time when the injured tissue has healed.
Measures of how well an athlete perceives movement are associated with how well they go on to perform in a range of sports. So sensory awareness could also be a way to identify athletic talent early.
In older people and in the context of preventing falls, poor scores on the same sensory input perception measures can predict later falls. This might be due to reduced physical activity in some older people. This “use it or lose it” idea might show how brain connections for movement perception and control can degrade over time... (MORE - missing details))
EXCERPTS: Even though the damage of an ankle sprain happens at the ankle, there may also be some changes going on in the brain to how it well it senses pain or movement.
One of our doctoral students, Ashley Marchant, has shown something similar happens when we change how much weight (or load) we put on the muscles of the lower limb. The closer the load is to normal earth gravity, the more accurate our movement sense is; the lower the muscle load, the less accurate we get.
This work means we need to rethink how the brain controls and responds to movement. Historically, movement science has attempted to improve muscle function through resistance training, cardiovascular exercise and flexibility.
One of the big issues in the treatment and prevention of sport injuries is that even when the sports medicine team feels an athlete is ready to return, the risk of a future injury remains twice to eight times higher than if they’d never had an injury. This means sports medicos have been missing something.
[...] For example, developing a limp after a leg injury means the brain is receiving very different movement information from that leg’s movement patterns. With plasticity, this may mean the movement control pattern doesn’t return to an optimum pre-injury status.
As mentioned previously, a history of injury is the best predictor of future injury. This suggests something changes in the athlete’s movement control processes after injury – most likely in the brain – which extends beyond the time when the injured tissue has healed.
Measures of how well an athlete perceives movement are associated with how well they go on to perform in a range of sports. So sensory awareness could also be a way to identify athletic talent early.
In older people and in the context of preventing falls, poor scores on the same sensory input perception measures can predict later falls. This might be due to reduced physical activity in some older people. This “use it or lose it” idea might show how brain connections for movement perception and control can degrade over time... (MORE - missing details))