Andreia S. P. Sousa is graduated in Physiotherapy by ESS-P.Porto (2006) and obtained her M.Sc. (2009) and her Ph.D. (2013) in Biomedical Engineering in the field of Biomechanical Analysis of Movement and Postural Control Areas by the University of Porto. Currently, she is a Full Professor in the Department of Physiotherapy of ESS-P.Porto and is also a member of the directive board of the Center for Rehabilitation Research (CIR) as coordinator of the Human Movement System (Re) habilitation Area. Andreia participated in 9 financed research projects contributing to the development and/or validation of technological solutions for rehabilitation and health promotion and to the validation of the effects of different kinds of footwear on health and injury prevention. Her main research areas include Motor Control assessment, addressed especially in the domain of Rehabilitation. Andreia has published 92 papers in national and international journals, book chapters and conferences. She has been a committee member of several international journals and has been (co-)supervisor of 98 graduation, 37 MSc and 2 PhD thesis and is now (co-) supervising 6 PhD projects.
Research challenges in rehabilitation sciences: searching for a common language between rehabilitation, biomechanics and neuroscience
In the last decades, research in the area of the study of motor control has made significant progress responding to the demands in the area of health with the availability of accurate and valid methods for the capture and analysis of movement. The biomechanical analysis of movement and postural control are effective tools for the diagnosis, therapy and prevention of neurological and neuromusculoskeletal dysfunction.
Currently, biomechanical instrumentation allows to measure the position of the joints in space and, if conjugated with force platforms, the joint forces, and if integrated with electromyography systems, the muscular activity. This type of systems includes, from gold standard optoelectronic systems to markerless systems and inertial measurement units, the latter with greater potential for application in clinical practice. The biomechanical data from these systems have the potential to: 1) assist the health professional in the decision-making process; 2) allow the creation of a knowledge base that can be used to establish a link between dysfunction, the underlying mechanisms and the intervention towards the personalization of health care, and 3) identify determining factors that can influence the progression of dysfunction and the rehabilitation process.
One of the research lines from the Center for Rehabilitation research aims to identify determinant biomechanical variables for characterization of dysfunction, prediction of disability and monitoring of the results of interventions in Rehabilitation. This presentation aims to present our contributions regarding this field.
