Webinar: Muscle+Ligament Model of the Head+Neck to Study Physiological Motions & Dynamic Impacts

The head and neck is a complex musculoskeletal system comprised of high degree of freedom kinematics, redundant muscles, and passive structures. This complexity makes reproducing physiologically relevant motions and dynamic head impacts difficult in simulation platforms. Building on a model developed by Vasavada, recent work has added cervical vertebrae inertial properties, updated muscle properties, and modeled rate-dependent cervical spine ligaments. In this webinar, Calvin Kuo from the University of British Columbia and Jon Mortensen from the University of Utah will discuss the model updates, their impact on physiologically relevant motion simulations and dynamic impact loading scenarios, and potential future directions for improvement and application.

You can learn more and access the resources described in the webinar by visiting SimTK:

The following publications also provide more details about topics discussed in the webinar:

[tamarachambers]

There was an experiment done in the the 70's that concluded that the neck (in it's normal upright position) is "stronger in resisting flexion (23.5 ft-lb) than it is in resisting extension (10.5 ft-lb) because the major muscles of the neck are located posterior of the occipital condyles and can generate a larger resistive couple to limit neck flexion." I included the reference. I hope this it useful or still relevant lol. :)

Mertz, Harold J., and Lawrence M. Patrick. "Strength and response of the human neck." SAE Transactions (1971): 2903-2928.

[ibrexg]

Great webinar. It would be nice if the DynamicLigamentForce plugin is updated to work with OpenSim 4.