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The implications of kinaesthetic training on coordination

University of British Columbia

Kinaesthetic training is used in many rehabilitation settings to improve kinaesthetic awareness of the injured limb. While this type of training improves one's sense of body awareness, the functional implications of kinaesthetic training remain unknown. The primary goal of this experiment was to explore the effects of kinaesthetic training on one's coordination. The coordination and kinaesthetic awareness of three groups, a control group, an actively trained group and a passively trained group, were tested before and after kinaesthetic training. Each group consisted of seven healthy female volunteers. Only the two training groups participated in four days of kinaesthetic training. In addition the coordination and kinaesthesis of the training groups was retested one and three weeks after the post-training test to measure the retention of the posttraining performance. The results indicate that there was no improvement on the coordination task on the post-training test. In contrast, the results indicate that active kinaesthetic training improves kinaesthetic awareness. However, the improvement in kinaesthetic awareness was not retained on the two retention tests. The findings from this study imply that improving one's sense of body awareness does not simultaneously improve their coordination. Possible explanations for the lack of improvement include various aspects of the training protocol (intensity and duration), the speed of movement and the type of coordination task used in this experiment. In addition, the findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying the improvement in kinaesthetic acuity are temporary and transient.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-07-10

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10629

Neuroscience

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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