We are very excited to have our work recently recognized by the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research. The Applied Biomechanics Laboratory has received an Outstanding Research Grant for our project titled “Incorporating physiological moment arm dynamics into simulations of human movement.”
Moment arms, the distance from a muscle-tendon line of action to the rotational joint center, are a critical functional component of the human musculoskeletal system, transforming muscle contractile forces into joint moments, enabling mechanical power generation to produce movement. In contrast to longstanding conventions, growing evidence suggests that muscle-tendon moment arms exhibit highly dynamic variations during human movement, reflecting combinatory effects of joint kinematics and muscle loading.
Support from this project will empower our early efforts to: (1) integrate a novel dynamic moment arm prediction framework into computational models of the lower extremity and (2) predict and validate the functional and age-associated consequences on in vivo triceps surae muscle-tendon behavior during walking.
Our sincere thanks to NCSRR and the OpenSim team.