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Foot placement control in people with Parkinson's disease
Parkinson’s disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative movement disorders affecting over 10 million people worldwide. Symptoms like impaired gait and postural instability can cause falls and highly impair patients’ mobility. The consequences of falls include fractures, hospital admissions, loss of independence, fear of falls, social isolation and early mortality. Falls are cited as one of the worst aspects of PD and unfortunately few efficacious interventions are available.
Keywords: Fall risk, Biomechanics, Parkinson's disease, Gait analysis
Maintaining stable gait is challenging, because the body’s CoM is positioned high above a small base of support. Consequently, any deviation in CoM movement that goes uncorrected will inevitably lead to a fall. To improve stable gait and prevent falls in people with PD, it is of importance to understand how CoM movement is controlled. Foot placement is the main mechanism to exert control on CoM movement and pilot results showed that this feedback process is impaired in people with PD.
Your Background: Student of Health Science and Technology, Biomedical Engineering, Movement Science or Physiotherapy interested in human movement science, biomechanics and data analysis
Maintaining stable gait is challenging, because the body’s CoM is positioned high above a small base of support. Consequently, any deviation in CoM movement that goes uncorrected will inevitably lead to a fall. To improve stable gait and prevent falls in people with PD, it is of importance to understand how CoM movement is controlled. Foot placement is the main mechanism to exert control on CoM movement and pilot results showed that this feedback process is impaired in people with PD.
Your Background: Student of Health Science and Technology, Biomedical Engineering, Movement Science or Physiotherapy interested in human movement science, biomechanics and data analysis
Analysing the feedback control of CoM movement by foot placement in people with Parkinson's disease
Your Tasks - Literature research • Data analysis • Report including thesis and presentation
Available Resources - Pre-processed data ready for analysis • Basic codes and pipelines
Analysing the feedback control of CoM movement by foot placement in people with Parkinson's disease
Your Tasks - Literature research • Data analysis • Report including thesis and presentation
Available Resources - Pre-processed data ready for analysis • Basic codes and pipelines