Low-load coordination dynamics in athletes, physiotherapists, gymnasts, musicians and patients with spinal cord injury, after stroke, traumatic brain lesion and with cerebral palsy.

Low-load coordination dynamics were measured in athletes, physiotherapists, gymnasts, musicians and patients after stroke, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord lesion during exercise on a special coordination dynamic therapy device to quantify differences in central nervous system (CNS) organization between healthy subjects and patients with CNS injury. In healthy humans coordination dynamics (arrhythmicity of turning) varied between 5.2 and 6.0 for forward and between 6.9 and 10.7 1/s for backward turning. The frequency of turning varied between 1.24 (athletes) and 1.49 Hz (musicians) for forward and between 1.11 and 1.25 Hz for backward turning. Apart from the poor rhythmicity of backward turning among physiotherapists, gymnasts and musicians, inter-group differences were small in comparison to intra-group variation. In patients with spinal cord lesion the coordination dynamics value was 8.3 for forward and 11.0 for backward turning. The frequencies for forward and backward turning were 1.20 and 1.20 Hz respectively. The values for coordination dynamics and frequency of turning thus did only slightly differ from those measured for healthy subjects. The patients after stroke, traumatic brain injury and cerebral palsy had much higher coordination dynamic values (20.4, 22.9 and 30 1/s respectively) and lower forward (0.85, 0.93, and 0.52 Hz) and backward turning frequencies (0.98, 1.06, 0.42 Hz), suggesting strongly pathologic CNS organization. Low-load coordination dynamics (20N) are thus useful to measure progress in CNS organization due to therapy in patients with CNS injury.