Mazzà Claudia, Iosa Marco, Picerno Pietro, Cappozzo Aurelio
Laboratory of Locomotor Apparatus Bioengineering, Department of Human Movement and Sport Sciences, Università degli Studi di Roma "Foro Italico", Piazza Lauro De Bosis 15, 00194 Rome, Italy.
Gait Posture. 2009 Feb;29(2):300-3. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2008.09.013. Epub 2008 Nov 14.
Despite the common knowledge about an evident tendency of females to walk with more style and poise than males, gender differences in walking mechanics have received little attention. Upper body oscillations during level walking are person specific and in able bodied individuals are characterised by an attenuation of the linear acceleration progressing from pelvis level up to head level. The manner of controlling head accelerations in the anatomical planes has recently been covered in the literature, but gender differences have been rarely investigated. This study aims to asses the existence of these differences. Two groups of young healthy volunteers (20 males, 23+/-2 y.o., and 20 females, 23+/-3 y.o.) were asked to walk along a linear pathway and upper body accelerations were directly measured using wearable inertial sensors located along the cranio-caudal axis at pelvis, shoulder, and head levels. Both groups managed to attenuate the antero-posterior accelerations, although the females exhibited a more effective shoulder to head attenuation. Group differences were found in the medio-lateral direction: not only were the males unable to attenuate the accelerations progressing from pelvis to shoulder levels to the same extent as the females, but head accelerations were even larger than those at the shoulder level. The females' ability to implement a more effective attenuation, possibly indicating a better control strategy, allowed them to reach head accelerations equivalent to those of the males despite higher pelvis accelerations. Although an explanation for these gender differences calls for further investigations, they should always be considered when upper body kinematics is used for clinical assessment.
尽管大家普遍认为女性走路比男性更有风格和仪态，但行走力学方面的性别差异却很少受到关注。在平地行走时，上身的摆动因人而异，对于身体健全的个体而言，其特征是从骨盆水平到头部水平的线性加速度逐渐减弱。最近文献中已经探讨了在解剖平面上控制头部加速度的方式，但性别差异很少被研究。本研究旨在评估这些差异的存在情况。两组年轻健康志愿者（20名男性，23±2岁，以及20名女性，23±3岁）被要求沿着一条直线道路行走，并使用沿颅尾轴放置在骨盆、肩部和头部水平的可穿戴惯性传感器直接测量上身加速度。两组都成功地减弱了前后方向的加速度，尽管女性在从肩部到头部的加速度减弱方面表现得更有效。在左右方向上发现了组间差异：男性不仅无法像女性那样在从骨盆到肩部水平的过程中同等程度地减弱加速度，而且头部加速度甚至比肩部水平的加速度还要大。女性实施更有效减弱的能力，这可能表明有更好的控制策略，使得她们尽管骨盆加速度更高，但仍能达到与男性相当的头部加速度。尽管对这些性别差异的解释需要进一步研究，但在将上身运动学用于临床评估时，应始终考虑到这些差异。
