Oxylane Research, 4 Boulevard de Mons, 59650 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
Gait Posture. 2011 Apr;33(4):686-9. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2011.02.027. Epub 2011 Mar 31.
It has been shown that the ability of humans to maintain a quiet standing posture is degraded after fatigue of the muscles at the ankle. Yet, it has also been shown that skin stimulation at the ankle could improve postural performance. In the present study, we addressed the issue of the interaction of these two effects. Subjects were tested with the eyes closed in four conditions of quiet stance: with or without skin stimulation and before and after a fatigue protocol. The skin was stimulated with a piece of medical adhesive tape on the Achilles' tendon. The fatigue protocol consisted of multiple sets of ankle plantar flexion of both legs on stool. Without fatigue, we did not observe a significant effect of the tape. With fatigue, subjects decreased their postural performance significantly, but this effect was cancelled out when a piece of tape was glued on the Achilles' tendon. This indicated that the beneficial effect of the tape was unveiled by the degraded postural performance after fatigue. We conclude that, when the muscular sensory input flow normally relevant for the postural system is impaired due to fatigue, the weight of cutaneous information increases for the successful representation of movements in space to adjust postural control.
已经表明，人类在踝关节肌肉疲劳后，保持安静站立姿势的能力会下降。然而，也有研究表明，踝关节的皮肤刺激可以改善姿势表现。在本研究中，我们探讨了这两种效应的相互作用。在闭眼的情况下，受试者在安静站立的四种条件下进行测试：有或没有皮肤刺激，以及疲劳方案之前和之后。皮肤刺激是通过在跟腱上贴一块医用胶带实现的。疲劳方案包括双腿在凳子上多次进行踝关节跖屈。在没有疲劳的情况下，我们没有观察到胶带的显著效果。在疲劳的情况下，受试者的姿势表现明显下降，但当在跟腱上贴上胶带时，这种效果就被抵消了。这表明，胶带的有益效果是由于疲劳后姿势表现下降而显现出来的。我们的结论是，当与姿势系统相关的肌肉感觉输入流由于疲劳而正常受损时，皮肤信息的权重会增加，以成功地表示空间中的运动，从而调整姿势控制。
