The effect of neck muscle fatigue on shoulder humeral rotation proprioception

Abstract

Fatigue of the cervical extensor muscles (CEM) is thought to disrupt afferent feedback from postural mechanoreceptors as it has been observed to cause decrements in upper limb proprioceptive accuracy. There has been limited research to quantify this interaction at the shoulder; thus further investigation into the effect of neck fatigue on shoulder joint position sense (JPS) accuracy is necessary. In this thesis, study one determined that high variability in upper limb DOFs led to no effect of neck fatigue on humeral rotation proprioception. Study two identified wrist deviation as a significant contributor to end effector variability when performing unconstrained humeral rotation. Wrist deviation will require a sufficient method of constraint in order to make significant observations of end effector position during humeral rotation possible.