The effects of virtual reality on the EMG activity of the lower limb muscles in the elderly during walking on the treadmill

Oral Presentation XML
Paper ID : 1606-12THCONG
Oral / Poster Presentation File: 1606-12THCONG.mp4 
Authors
1department of motor behavior, faculty of sport
2department of motor behavior,faculty of sport
3motor behavior department, sport psychology
Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) has an important role in the rehabilitation of gait disorders. But the mechanism of the VR on muscle activity during gait and has not been understood yet. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of virtual reality on the EMG activity of the lower limb muscles during gait on the treadmill in the elderly.
12 male subjects with mean age, height and weight of 61.8±3.9, 167.9±5.1 and 75.1±11.47 respectively participated in this study voluntarily. Using an EMG-USB2+ multichannel system (Bioelettronica Italy) (sampling frequency of 1000 Hz) and bipolar surface electrodes, the electrical activity of tibialis anterior (TA), rectus femoris (RF) and biceps femoris (BF) muscles were recorded bilaterally during gait on the treadmill under two different conditions including: a) normal walking, and b) and walking in virtual reality environment. The gathered signals were processed using OT BioLab software with band pass filter of 10-350 Hz and notch filter of 50 Hz. MVC method was used for the normalization of signals. Using SPSS software (version 24) and repeated measure analysis of variance the data was processed with significance level of 0.05.
showed that in overall, the normalized EMG activity of TA muscle was higher than RF and BF muscles (p=0.035). But the difference between RF and BF muscles was not significant (p=0.65). The interaction between VR and muscle factors was significant (p=0.043), and VR changed the normalized EMG activity of RF muscle differently than TA muscle in elderly subjects.
the results indicate that VR has effect on the EMG activity of lower extremity muscles among the elderly. So, it can be recommended strongly in rehabilitation of lower extremity muscles in elderly subjects.
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