Highlights Physical activity (PA) of children during the early COVID-19 response in the US was decreased compared pre-pandemic, per parent report. Changes in physical activity varied by age, with the largest changes seen in high-schoolers and less impact in preschoolers. Overall, children across all age groups were reported to have less community-based and peer PA during the pandemic, which aligned with social distancing guidelines at the time. Community leaders, educators, and parents are reminded to make PA a priority to assure children continue to receive the levels of activity necessary to promote good health.

There appears a linear relationship between small increases in running speed and cardiovascular health benefits. Encouraging or coaching recreational runners to increase their running speed to derive these health benefits might be more effective if their joint level kinematic and kinetic strategy was understood. The aim of this investigation was to compare the peak sagittal plane motions, moments, and powers of the hip, knee and ankle at 85%, 100%, 115% and 130% of self-selected running speed. Overground running data were collected in 12 recreational runners (6 women, 6 men) with a full body marker set using a 12-camera Vicon MX system with an AMTI force plate. Kinematics and kinetics were analyzed with Vicon Nexus software. Participants chose to run at 2.6 ± 0.5 m/s (85%); 3.0 ± 0.5 m/s (100%); 3.3 ± 0.5 m/s (115%); and 3.7 ± 0.5 m/s (130%); these four speeds approximately correspond to 6:24-, 5:33-, 5:03-, and 4:30-min kilometer running paces. Running speed had a significant effect (P < 0.05) on peak kinematic and kinetic variables of the hips, knees and ankles, with peak sagittal hip moments invariant (P > 0.54) and the peak sagittal ankle power generation (P < 0.0001) the most highly responsive variable. The timing of the peak sagittal extensor moments and powers at the hip, knee and ankle were distributed across stance in a sequential manner. This study shows that running speed affects lower limb joint kinematics and kinetics and suggests that specific intersegmental kinetic strategies might exist across the narrow range of running speeds.

Abstract. Sensorimotor cortex plasticity induced by constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) in six children (10.2 AE 2.1 years old) with hemiplegic cerebral palsy was assessed by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The activation laterality index and time-to-peak/duration during a finger-tapping task and the resting-state functional connectivity were quantified before, immediately after, and 6 months after CIMT. These fNIRS-based metrics were used to help explain changes in clinical scores of manual performance obtained concurrently with imaging time points. Five age-matched healthy children (9.8 AE 1.3 years old) were also imaged to provide comparative activation metrics for normal controls. Interestingly, the activation time-to-peak/duration for all sensorimotor centers displayed significant normalization immediately after CIMT that persisted 6 months later. In contrast to this improved localized activation response, the laterality index and resting-state connectivity metrics that depended on communication between sensorimotor centers improved immediately after CIMT, but relapsed 6 months later. In addition, for the subjects measured in this work, there was either a trade-off between improving unimanual versus bimanual performance when sensorimotor activation patterns normalized after CIMT, or an improvement occurred in both unimanual and bimanual performance but at the cost of very abnormal plastic changes in sensorimotor activity. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Therapeutic level II.