A new experimental protocol to quantitatively assess the motor control capability of low-back pain patinents during dynamic trunk movement

An experimental protocol was developed and tested in this study in order to quantify the motor control capability of the trunk movement for both healthy subjects and low-back pain (LBP) patients. Information processing capacity (bits/second) (Fitts, 1954) and dynamic motor perfor- mance such as flexion/extension velocity and acceleration were measured as motor control parameters under the controlled range of motion (ROM). In this study, the original experimental propocol (Kim et al., 1993, 1994) was re-designed to reduce the length of the test via a series of statistical analyses for clinical application. The accuracy of the shortened protocol was statistically examined and indicated no difference conpared to the original protocol in terms of evaluating information processing capacity. This protocol was also tested among ten healthy subjects and ten LBP patients for validation purpose. The results showed that the information processing capacity was not significantly diffenent between two groups due to the large variation although there was an apparent mean difference. Average movement time showed a significant increase in LBP patients com- pared to healthy subjects. In conclusion, it was found that the new short experimental protocol could quantify the motor control capability of neuromuscular system of the trunk and also showed the applicability to patient population.