Use of a bicycle ergometer for limb position sense testing during a cyclic lower limb task

Patients with neurologic impairments are tested for proprioceptive deficits using static or quasi-static techniques that are not applied within the context of a functional movement task. This study was conducted to determine if limb position sense LPS testing can be reliably measured during a dynamic cyclic task eg, pedaling and whether the accuracy of LPS will be affected by movement and is phasedependent. Experiments were performed with 16 young adult subjects. Subjects pedaled a bicycle ergometer while attempting to identify when their foot traveled through a specified target region. Errors were measured when they incorrectly identified that their foot was in a region outside of the target. Subjects were tested in active versus passive versus static modes, eyes-open versus eyes-closed, and at each of 7 target regions. The LPS test showed high reliability ICC 1,1 ranged from 0.86 to 0.98. Passive movement resulted in the least errors. During active movement, transition regions had the least errors and the mid-downstroke region had the most errors. Therefore LPS, tested during pedaling, was reliable and revealed movement and phasedependent position sense.