Encouraging More Youthful Mechanics and Energetics of Locomotion through Intervention for Older Adults
A special issue of Biomechanics (ISSN 2673-7078). This special issue belongs to the section "Neuromechanics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2023) | Viewed by 13561
Special Issue Editors
Interests: neuromuscular biomechanics; sensorimotor control; aging and age-related mobility impairment
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Age-related changes in the mechanics and energetics of walking have the potential to negatively affect gait performance, walking economy and fatigability, biomechanics, stability, and reslience to balance challenges. Younger adults are universally used to establish the benchmark for healthy gait mechanics and energetics and, thereby, targets for determining the efficacy of interventions prescribed for older adults. Unfortunately, this introduces at least two challenges that may fundamentally limit the broader impact of our translational efforts. The first is that the results of observational studies designed to compare younger and older adults are unable to establish the cause-and-effect relations needed to have a genuine mechanisms-based focus for intervention design and prescription. The second is whether or not our translational goals should be guided by: (i) intervening by default to minimize or eliminate age-related differences in walking mechanics and energetics, and (ii) the principle that steering walking mechanics and energetics in older adults to resemble those in younger adults will maximize clinical impact and improve independence and quality of life. Indeed, older adults differ from young adults in substantial ways and, in many cases, experience inter-dependent declines in the structure, morphology, composition, and function of nearly all neuromusculoskeletal tissues and processes responsible for powering locomotion.
This Special Issue is, therefore, interested in succint perspectives or reviews (by invitation) or original research articles focusing on:
- Interventions designed to rejuvinate the mechanics and energetics of locomotion in older adults in enduring ways, including, but not limited to, endurance activities, strength or power training, perturbation training, footwear modifications, and/or assistive robotic technologies;
- Confounders and comorbidities that could influence the efficacy of intervention prescription to rejuvinate the mechanics and energetics of walking in older adults, including but not limited to pain, stiffness, fatigability, movement variability, pathology, and neuropsychological factors of aging, such as self-efficacy and kinesiophobia;
- Innovative experimental approaches to probed mechanisms or pathways for restoration of mechanics and energetics of locomotion in older adults;
- Modeling and simulation approaches to accelerate throughput in the design and evaluation of interventions to rejuvinate the mechanics and energetics of walking in older adults.
Dr. Jason R. Franz
Dr. Katherine Boyer
Guest Editors
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