The effect of mobilisation of the fifth bone in the neck on head position sense

INTERVENTION: The purpose of this project is to determine whether mobilisation of the fifth bone in the neck alters head position sense. The hypothesis to be considered is: Mobilisation applied to a joint in the neck alters head position sense in healthy subjects. The Null hypothesis is that mobilisation applied to a joint in the neck does not have any effect on head position sense. The proposed design involves one group of subjects and repeated random measures will be taken on these subjects. The subjects will undergo two conditions in a random order, to minimise the potential for an order effect. Randomisation will occur by utilising opaque envelopes containing a number indicating the condition to be performed first. The envelopes will contain an equal number of the conditions and will be well shuffled. Subjects will select an envelope on commencing the study and this will determine the order in which they undergo the conditions. Thus testing of head position sense will be performed before and after both conditions. The two conditions involved are mobilisation (condition one), which will be compared with a control condition of lying still for 5 minutes (condition two). A control condition is included to determine whether any change in head position sense relates to the mobilisation or merely repeating the test. The subjects will essentially act as their own 'controls' since they will complete both conditions. Measurements will be taken during two separate testing sessions. Previous studies assessing the effect of manual therapy using a repeated random measures design have performed the conditions on separate days, presumably to be able to assess the true effect of each condition. It is recognised that these studies also included a placebo condition, however they demonstrated that this produced minimal or non‐significant changes when assessing heart rate, respiratory rate and skin conductance in normal subjects . Although assessing the placebo effect of manual treatment on CONDITION: Musculoskeletal Diseases ; Musculoskeletal Diseases PRIMARY OUTCOME: Head position sense, utilising the helmet method which has been previously described and has been utilised in several other studies. SECONDARY OUTCOME: Not provided at time of registration INCLUSION CRITERIA: Not provided at time of registration