Fatigue is commonly experienced not only by those with a disease or injury, but also by healthy people in everyday life.
The ability of a muscle to produce force depends on many factors including the length of the muscle.
We know that the ability to detect contact with the skin changes with age.
Measuring how well people can drive their muscle to produce maximum forces tells us a lot about the voluntary control of movement.
Skin sensation, or the ability to detect contact on the skin, declines with age.
Every year more than 60,000 Australians suffer a stroke and this number will only increase with the aging population the growing epidemics of obesity, physical inactivity and diabetes.
Successful rehabilitation after stroke is limited by many factors including trained personnel, equipment, time and money.
Very little is known about the way in which the body controls voluntary movement changes after stroke, or which neurophysiological structures cause such changes.
There are 350-400 new cases of spinal cord injury in Australia every year. These injuries cause sudden and devastating changes in patients’ ability to live independently.
We are developing a tool that will allow us to identify the potential for the recovery of voluntary movement control after spinal cord injury.
