['The cause of disc herniation is not well understood yet. It is assumed that heavy lifting and extreme postures can cause small injuries starting either in the inner anulus or from the outside close to the endplate. Such injuries are accumulated over years until its structure is weakened and finally a single loading event leads to a sudden failure of the last few intact lamellae. This paper describes a novel, custom-developed dynamic 6-DOF disc-loading simulator that allows complex loading to provoke such disc damage and herniations.', "The machine's axes are driven by six independent servomotors providing high loads (10 kN axial compression, 2 kN shear, 100 Nm torque) up to 5\xa0Hz. A positional accuracy test was conducted to validate the machine. Subsequently, initial experiments with lumbar ovine motion segments under complex loading were performed. After testing, the discs were examined in an ultra-high field MRI (11.7 T). A three-dimensional reconstruction was performed to visualise the internal disc lesions.", 'Validation tests demonstrated positioning with an accuracy of ≤0.08°/≤0.026\xa0mm at 0.5\xa0Hz and ≤0.27°/≤0.048\xa0mm at 3.0\xa0Hz with amplitudes of ±17°/±2\xa0mm. Typical failure patterns and herniations could be provoked with complex asymmetrical loading protocols. Loading with axial compression, flexion, lateral bending and torsion lead in 8 specimens to 4 herniated discs, two protrusions and two delaminations. All disc failures occurred in the posterior region of the disc.'] Does a new dynamic six degrees of freedom disc-loading simulator allow to provoke disc damage and herniation?