Article

To assess the effectiveness of a tongue-placed electrotactile biofeedback system
to improve ankle force sense following plantar-flexor muscles fatigue, 11 young
healthy adults were asked to perform an isometric contra-lateral force
ankle-matching task in two experimental conditions of No fatigue and Fatigue of
the plantar-flexor muscles and two conditions of No biofeedback and Biofeedback.
The underlying principle of the biofeedback consisted of supplying subjects with
supplementary information about the force developed by the plantar-flexor muscles
through electrical stimulation of the tongue. Measures of the overall accuracy
and the variability of the force ankle-matching performances were determined
using the absolute error and the variable error, respectively. Results showed
that (1) the Fatigue condition yielded increased absolute and variable errors
relative to the No fatigue condition in the No biofeedback condition, whereas (2)
no significant difference between the two No fatigue and Fatigue conditions was
observed in the Biofeedback condition. These results suggest that subjects were
able to integrate augmented sensory information delivered through electrotactile
stimulation of the tongue to suppress the adverse effect of plantar-flexor
muscles fatigue on ankle force sense.

Langue : ANGLAIS