Network analysis of bodywide coordination supporting suprapostural dexterity
Objective: This project aims to study how the body coordinates movement as a whole to develop new rehabilitative interventions for movement disorders. Current approaches focus on individual anatomical parts rather than the body's functional integrity, which may be more vital to healthy movement.
Significance: Prevailing understandings of movement disorders characterize "broken" movements in a piecewise fashion, for instance, focusing on motor control, muscle tone, posture, or cognition, independently of each other. These fractured approaches to movement coordination are vlind to the body's functional integrity. Consequently, rehabilitative interventions target the limb or body parts most affected by the disorder seeking to support the whole body by mending the broken part. However, dexterity is global, functional coordination spanning the whole body. In other words, task completion draws on fundamental interactivity allowing the body to coordinate various anatomical parts. This coordination may be more vital to healthy movement than individual anatomical parts. Understanding this interactivity is thus paramount to developing noval rehabilitative interventions to prevent falls and improve the quality of life in pathaological populations.
Approach: This project integrates a a customizable life-size Trail Making Test with posturography, whole-body movement tracking, and eye tracking, along with state-of-the-art cascade modeling and network analayis methods to assess functional coordination across the whole body. Aim 1 will investigate how multiplicative interactions among movement-system components support suprapostural dexterity. We hypothesize that maintaining an upright stance would produce a functional network of multiplicative interactions among movement-system components. Aim 2 will investigate how multiplicative interactions among movement system components support suprapostural dexterity in the face of postural instability. We hypothesize that destabilizing contact with the ground surface when maintaining an upright stance will produce modular networks of multiplicative interactions with increased connectivity among these modules compared to stable standing.
Impact: This modeling framework offers a new way to understand suprapostural dexterity and its breakdwon in various movement disorders in light of recent theoretical developments in cascade modeling and network physiology.
Contact us at unobiomechanics@unomaha.edu about participating in this research.
If you are interested in joining the research team, please contact Dr. Magalam at mmangalam@unomaha.edu.