Measure Joint re-positioning with MOTI

The guys from the R&D team are back from the lab with new data where they used MOTI to measure joint re-positioning. But what is joint re-positioning, what can it tell us and what can we use it for?

To answer this, we quickly need to revise how our body is designed with regards to sensing where it is in space. We have written a bit about it previously (see here). In short, in our body we have sensors built into our joints, ligaments and muscles that help us plan and coordinate our movements. For joint re-positioning, it means that we are able to start in a particular position with e.g. our neck, move out of that position and then find back to the starting point with pretty good accuracy (we are talking a few degrees here ;-)). This is possible because of the millions of receptors we have in and around our joints that continually send information to our brain. The brain then processes the information, assesses, re-calculates and then creates an output that matches the task required of the system. Pretty smart, right?

Ok fair enough, but why is it important to measure this?

In injury, the information from the receptors in and around our joints is disturbed and, in some cases, lost for good. A good example is when we have an injury to the ligaments around the knee or in the neck when we sustain a painful whiplash injury to the neck. In whiplash in fact (which often occurs in e.g. car accidents), it has been shown that