Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Successful movement patterns rely on sensory feedback that informs the central nervous system (CNS) about our surroundings, so that it can modify movements to meet task and environmental demands. Specialized receptors within muscles, tendons, joints, and skin provide insight about the contractile properties of muscle and heavily contribute to the sense of force output. Local vibration (LV) disrupts signals from muscles needed for precise adjustments in muscle activity to correct movements, and when used on opposing muscles, it dampens the responsiveness of neurons controlling the primary muscle. My honours work shows that there are torque matching errors when the opposing muscle is vibrated. However, since this data was collected during isometric contraction (i.e., no motion of joint or limb), limited information about the neural control of movement could be established. During real life movements, the CNS must adjust as the limbs move, so that we can maintain appropriate and smooth movements. Due to this constant reliance on feedback, LV may make it even harder for the CNS to correctly interpret sensory signals, resulting in greater errors than under stationary conditions. The purpose of the current research is to explore this phenomenon, hypothesizing that errors will be greater during movement. High-density surface electromyography, an effective method to gain insights about the neural control of muscle, will be used to provide information about the neural underpinnings of the LV-induced errors on the motor system. Participants will complete a torque matching task while stationary and while moving, including two contractions per trial, one with and one without visual feedback, so that we can assess how LV affects their ability to reproduce torque across conditions.