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Abstract

There are many structures within the nervous system that, as a whole, are responsible for the control of movement and balance. The spinal cord plays an important role in sensorimotor processing, it integrates sensory signals from the periphery as well as signals from the brain to control muscle activation. The purpose of this thesis was to characterize the short latency (spinally mediated) lower limb muscle responses to proprioceptive perturbations during standing, and examine how they are influenced by ageing and chronic stroke. Chapter 2 develops an innovative methodology to characterize muscle responses to proprioceptive perturbations during standing. Here, we examined the association between noisy (10-115 Hz) suprathreshold Achilles tendon vibration and ongoing triceps surae muscle activity. We observed responses in soleus across a broad frequency bandwidth (~10-80 Hz). Consistent responses were obtained with short trial durations (