Determining Leg Dominance Using the Unipedal Stance Test (UPST)

Purpose: To determine whether the kicking leg or stance leg as determined by the Ball Kicking test results in a longer unipedal stance time as determined by the UPST. Subjects: Forty-two healthy subjects (13 male, 29 female, mean age 26) with no history of lower limb pathology or balance impairments. Materials and Methods: Subjects completed the Ball Kicking test and three trials of the UPST in a single session. Results: UPST times were compared between the best trials of the stance and kicking legs with a significant difference found. Fifty percent of participants (21/42) maintained longer single limb stance times on the stance leg, as determined by the Ball Kicking test. Conclusions: This study suggests that young, healthy adults demonstrated a selective limb preference for stability tasks compared to mobility tasks related to improved stability and control. The stance limb, as determined by the Ball Kicking test, may be more adept at static balance compared to the kicking limb, which may challenge the currently-utilized concept of leg dominance. Clinical Relevance: While it is widely assumed that the leg a person kicks with may be more proficient for functional activities that require strength, speed, and coordination activities, this study shows that the stance leg is actually more proficient during a static balance activity such as standing on one leg. This suggests the Ball Kicking test may be used to determine mobility and stability legs when teaching or performing functional activities such as a step-to pattern ascending and descending stairs

Biomarkers in aggression

Aggressive behavior exerts an enormous impact on society remaining among the main causes of worldwide premature death. Effective primary interventions, relying on predictive models of aggression that show adequate sensitivity and specificity are currently lacking. One strategy to increase the accuracy and precision of prediction would be to include biological data in the predictive models. Clearly, to be included in such models, biological markers should be reliably associated with the specific trait under study (i.e., diagnostic biomarkers). Aggression, however, is phenotypically highly heterogeneous, an element that has hindered the identification of reliable biomarkers. However, current research is trying to overcome these challenges by focusing on more homogenous aggression subtypes and/or by studying large sample size of aggressive individuals. Further advance is coming by bioinformatics approaches that are allowing the integration of inter-species biological data as well as the development of predictive algorithms able to discriminate subjects on the basis of the propensity toward aggressive behavior. In this review we first present a brief summary of the available evidence on neuroimaging of aggression. We will then treat extensively the data on genetic determinants, including those from hypothesis-free genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and candidate gene studies. Transcriptomic and neurochemical biomarkers will then be reviewed, and we will dedicate a section on the role of metabolomics in aggression. Finally, we will discuss how biomarkers can inform the development of new pharmacological tools as well as increase the efficacy of preventive strategies