No. 70 Mechanical Work as a Tool for the Assessment of Muscle Synergism

When a person performs a task, there is a displacement of the center of mass (COM) an action that consumes energy and performs mechanical work. The objective of this study was to quantify muscle synergism (MS) during maintenance of posture control using total mechanical work (WTOT) obtained from body segments after motor and visual disturbance. Ten healthy male subjects mean age 25.6 ( 226 ) years were selected to participate in this study. The subjects were asked to perform trunk extension to straight position in their maximum speed under the conditions: eyes open (EO) and eyes blindfolded (EB) in order to induce some motor and visual disturbance. Data were obtained from kinematic analysis using a frequency of 200 Hz and processed by Matlab software. Statistical analysis was performed using the Student’s t test for paired data (p > 0.05). There was a significant difference (p < 005) for legs at 0.60 MS and for thighs at 0.100 MS when both conditions (EO and EB) were compared. These differences may be related to somato-sensory mechanisms promoted by MS therefore suggesting that WTOT may be an invaluable tool to evaluate patients in physical rehabilitation programs.