Human Physiology and Sports Physiotherapy
Project description
Our research is focused on 'Exercise and the Brain in Health & Disease' on three levels: fundamental, applied/clinical and policy-making/benchmarking. The majority of our research projects contribute to all of these levels, with fundamental studies followed by applied clinical studies, which in turn lead to benchmarking studies or policy-making advice. Below you can find a short overview of our research projects:
Brain function during physical and cognitive effort in a healthy population:
- Physical fatigue, thermoregulation and brain neurotransmission
- Placebo effects in exercise and sport
- Mental fatigue and its interactions with physical and cognitive performance
Brain function during physical and cognitive effort within a clinical context
- Overtraining syndrome in athletes
- The influence of obesity, diabetes & cardiovascular diseases on the functioning of the brain
- Returning to sport and the brain
- Injury prevention: fatigue and neurocognitive aspects
- Nanobat: European collaboration to develop medication with nanotechnology to combat obesity
- Scaffy: European collaboration to develop an extracellular matrix to promote brown adipose tissue differentiation
Health-promoting effects of active commuting to and from work (commuting by bicycle, cycling desk)
- Health-promoting effects of commuting by bike
- Exercise and air pollution on the functioning of the brain
Nutrition and brain function
- Cocoaflavanols and brain function during cognitive and physical exercise
Interaction between humans and robots:
- Strategic Research Programme: Exercise and the Brain in Health & Disease: The Added Value of
Human-Centered Robotics and encompasses the following projects:
- AMP foot: Physical and cognitive load during general and day-to-day activities of lower leg amputated people
- Cyberlegs++: Physical and cognitive load during general and daily activities of people with upper leg amputation
- Exo4Work: Interaction between humans and exoskeleton in laboratory and industrial settings
- SOPHIA: Improving workplace ergonomy through collaborative robots
About the research Group
Research group Human Physiology
The research in the Human Physiology research group is focused on ‘Exercise and the Brain in Health & Disease’ where the interaction of exercise on neurochemistry and neurophysiology is explored. The research is concentrated at 3 different levels:- Fundamental – Physiological research- Applied – Clinical research- Benchmarking – Policy making research
Most of the research projects progress through these 3 levels, starting from fundamental studies (e.g. animal studies) through applied, clinical trials, which lead to benchmarking studies or to policy making advice.
Fundamental – Physiological research. At this fundamental level, animal and human experiments are combined, with measurements of neurotransmitters and the hormonal output from the brain during different manipulations. We perform fundamental research on the limits of fatigue, mechanisms of thermoregulation, and the positive effects of exercise on neurogenesis. The new research line on exercise and pollution and the brain also includes animal studies.
The Applied – Clinical aims at examining the value of the study findings of the fundamental research at the applied/clinical level. Again, all studies are within the area of exercise and the brain in health & disease. In general, the applied – clinical research is focused on studying exercise and training in different patient populations such as cardiovascular disease, obese, diabetes patients, sports injuries. Recently, the effects of exercise and pollution are integrated into the applied – clinical cluster, this way the health enhancing effects of ‘commuter cycling’ are weighed against air pollution. Linking brain research with pathologies such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease is established in collaboration with prof dr. Luc Van Loon (University of Maastricht, The Netherlands). Together we supervised a PhD project which now results in research on cognition, neurogenesis in diabetics, and the elderly person. The ongoing collaboration with dr. Elsa Heyman (University of Lille France) is in full support of this project. We are looking at cognitive aspects in type 1 diabetics.
In order to bring applied research in line with the Exercise & Brain research we created the ‘Lotto Sport Science Chair’. In a PhD project several aspects of performance and recovery are examined, focusing on brain mechanisms of fatigue and recovery. These experiments are linked with the control experiments from the Antarctica mission (2011-2012), and the project focusing on sleep & recovery, and the underlying neurophysiological aspects of recovery and (over)training (see refs. 20-21). Most of the applied sports research is in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) looking at training & recovery. Sports Injury Prevention, especially neuromuscular aspects of injury prevention, are run together with prof dr. Evert Verhaegen (University of Amsterdam) and integrating sports injuries with fatigue, recovery and underlying neuromuscular mechanisms. In 2013 the ACSM-ECSS consensus statement on Overtraining was published. This is the ‘standard’ publication which is now accepted by the two largest sports science societies in the world (American College of Sports Medicine and the European College of Sport Science) - (publication January 2013).
Policy making research. The ‘Commuter Cycling’ research line investigates the effect of cycling for transportation on health in a broad prospective. In collaboration with VITO we examine the balance between the health enhancing effects of commuting by bicycle and exercising in busy traffic (polluted air). Bicycle accidents are analyzed in detail in adult and adolescent populations in order to advise policy makers how to create a safer and healthier environment.