سينرژي‌هاي عضلاني افراد ناشنوا حين راه رفتن

The central nervous system controls muscle activity through coordinated groups an‎d muscle synergies to reduce the number of control degrees of freedom required for the execution of movements. Walking is also one of the movements that follows a synergistic control strategy an‎d requires appropriate coordination among the nervous, sensory, an‎d musculoskeletal systems. In deaf individuals, changes in sensory information an‎d the possible presence of associated vestibular dysfunction may affect balance, gait pattern, an‎d the control of muscle activity. Despite several studies investigating balance an‎d gait characteristics in deaf individuals, the organization of muscle synergies during walking has received limited attention. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to compare muscle synergies between deaf an‎d hearing individuals during walking. Participants who met the inclusion criteria were recruited into two groups of deaf an‎d hearing individuals. Lower-limb muscle activity during walking at a self-selec‎ted speed was recorded using a surface electromyography (sEMG) system. Following preprocessing an‎d temporal normalization of the EMG signals, muscle synergies were extracted using the Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) algorithm. The number of muscle synergies required to reconstruct the muscle activity patterns an‎d their activation profiles were determined. In addition, differences in the relative contribution of muscles within the identified synergies were compared between the two groups. The results showed that the number of muscle synergies required to reconstruct muscle activity patterns was not the same between the two groups; specifically, four synergies were identified in the deaf group, whereas five synergies were identified in the hearing group. Differences were also observed in the activation profiles an‎d relative muscle weighting within the different synergies between the two groups. These findings suggest that deaf individuals exhibit a different organization of muscle synergies during walking compared with hearing individuals. This difference may reflect the use of alternative neuromuscular control strategies under conditions of altered sensory information. Examination of muscle synergies, alongside other motor assessment indices, may provide valuable information for a better understan‎ding of motor control an‎d for the development of targeted rehabilitation programs for deaf individuals.

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