Have you ever thought of an ankle sprain as a brain injury? Most people probably wouldn't. However, we are starting to understand how the brain is constantly adapting, known as plasticity . Even though the damage of an ankle sprain happens at the ankle, there may also be some changes going on in the brain to how it well it senses pain or movement .
One of our doctoral students, Ashley Marchant, has shown something similar happens when we change how much weight (or load) we put on the muscles of the lower limb. The closer the load is to normal earth gravity, the more accurate our movement sense is; the lower the muscle load, the less accurate we get. This work means we need to rethink how the brain controls and responds to movement.
Solving an important puzzle Historically, movement science has attempted to improve muscle function through resistance training , cardiovascular exercise and flexibility. One of the big issues in the treatment and prevention of sport injuries is that even when the sports medicine team feels an athlete is ready to return, the risk of a future injury remains twice to eight times higher than if they'd never had an injury. This means sports medics have been missing something.
Our work at the University of Canberra and the Australian Institute of Sport has targeted sensory input in an attempt to solve this puzzle. The goal has been to assess the ability of the sensory reception, or perception, aspect of movement control. Input (sensory) nerves outnumber.
