Using New Emg-Incorporated Optimization Model to Estimate the Spinal Load and Spinal Stability of the Human Cervical Spine in Healthy Subjects and Patients with Chronic Neck Pain

Proper spinal load and spinal stability of cervical spine are essential in daily life activities to protect the neck-head complex, which rely on normal muscle activations and integral spinal columns. Muscles play an important role to provide the spinal movement and to maintain the spinal stability at the same time. Muscle activations could augment the stiffness of the spine at the cost of increased spinal load which may deteriorate the peripheral tissues. Chronic neck pain is a common musculoskeletal disorder of the cervical spine. Patients with chronic neck pain showed decreased muscle strength and endurance, and suffered from spinal degeneration with age. Such disorder accordingly may result in the imbalance between the spinal load and stability. The redundant musculoskeletal system, however, makes it difficult to explore the effect of cervical muscle recruitments and spinal column integrity on the spine. The purpose of this study is to establish a new EMG-incorporated optimization model to examine the changes of the spinal load and spinal stability during the neck movements. Two clinical factors, i.e. the muscle fatigue and spinal degeneration, will be incorporated into the model to investigate their roles on the load and stability of the cervical spine. The results will facilitate the understanding of the neuromuscular control strategy of the subjects with and without neck pain, as well as provide information of early diagnosis and guidelines for exercise training in patients with neck pain.

Project ID:PB9902-3848
External Project ID:NSC99-2218-E182-004