Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment and Postural Control: Systems Engineering Approach

The overall goal of this project is to develop sensitive and objective clinical research tools for the assessment of postural control of the trunk. In order to accomplish this goal, we aim to quantify balance performance in an unstable seated task. Specifically, the investigators will quantify balance performance in low back pain participants before and after osteopathic manipulative treatment. The investigators hypothesize that there will be a significant improvement in balance performance after a single session of osteopathic manipulative treatment as well as after 4 sessions of osteopathic manipulative treatment and this improvement will be greater than any learning effect. A secondary objective of this study is to quantify differences in patient-oriented outcome measures (e.g., self-reported pain, disability) in low back pain participants before and after osteopathic manipulative treatment. The investigators hypothesize that there will be a significant improvement in these self-reported outcomes following osteopathic manipulative treatment. The association between improvement in postural control parameters and patient-oriented measures will also be explored.