Leg Dominance Effects on Postural Control When Performing Challenging Balance Exercises.

Arunee Promsri,Peter Federolf,Thomas Haid,Inge Werner

doi:10.3390/brainsci10030128

Arunee Promsri, Peter Federolf + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10030128

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Journal: Brain sciences	Publication Date: Feb 25, 2020
Citations: 52	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Phayao, Universität Innsbruck

Abstract

Leg dominance reflects the preferential use of one leg over another and is typically attributed to asymmetries in the neural circuitry. Detecting leg dominance effects on motor behavior, particularly during balancing exercises, has proven difficult. The current study applied a principal component analysis (PCA) on kinematic data, to assess bilateral asymmetry on the coordinative structure (hypothesis H1) or on the control characteristics of specific movement components (hypothesis H2). Marker-based motion tracking was performed on 26 healthy adults (aged 25.3 ± 4.1 years), who stood unipedally on a multiaxial unstable board, in a randomized order, on their dominant and non-dominant leg. Leg dominance was defined as the kicking leg. PCA was performed to determine patterns of correlated segment movements (“principal movements” PMks). The control of each PMk was characterized by assessing its acceleration (second-time derivative). Results were inconclusive regarding a leg-dominance effect on the coordinative structure of balancing movements (H1 inconclusive); however, different control (p = 0.005) was observed in PM3, representing a diagonal plane movement component (H2 was supported). These findings supported that leg dominance effects should be considered when assessing or training lower-limb neuromuscular control and suggest that specific attention should be given to diagonal plane movements.

Highlights

In humans, the preference of using one side of the body for unimanual tasks is well recognized as a self-evident aspect of human motor control
We investigated the effects of leg dominance on postural control by decomposing unipedal balancing movements into sets of movement dimensions through a principal component analysis (PCA)
Among the two variables characterizing the control of movement components (Nk and σk ), we found only one significant effect of leg dominance which passed the criteria of the Holm–Bonferroni correction (Table 4): substantially more changes in the direction of PM3 acceleration were found when balancing on the non-dominant leg, as compared to balancing on the dominant leg (N3 : F(1, 24) = 9.47, p = 0.005, ηp 2 = 0.283)

Summary

Introduction

The preference of using one side of the body for unimanual tasks is well recognized as a self-evident aspect of human motor control. This phenomenon reflects bilateral asymmetry in motor control circuitry between the right and left hemispheres, seen in both upper and lower extremities [1,2]. Handedness is typically clearly defined by the ability to write competently. The development of handedness is often attributed to distinct specializations of the underlying neural control system. The dynamic dominance hypothesis by Sainburg purports that the dominant system specializes in controlling limb trajectory or predictive control, while the non-dominant specializes for control of limb position or impedance control [1,3,4]. There are recent results challenging the idea of interlimb differences in control strategies [5,6]

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