Attentional artifacts in sensorimotor coupling in the postural control of young adults

Abstract

Although postural control requires the integration of different sensory cues, little is known about the role of attentional artifacts on the individual's ability to properly respond to postural challenges. This study investigated the effects of concomitant tasks (cognitive and postural) on the relationship between visual information and body sway. Thirty healthy adults were asked to stand still inside of a moving room on normal and reduced bases of support. Initially, the participants were not aware of any visual manipulation and were asked to perform tasks that required concomitant attentional demands. Then, all participants were informed about the visual manipulation and were requested to resist it. The results showed that information about visual manipulation changed the coupling between visual information and body sway, but only in a less demanding task, and that it was affected by the concomitant task. The coupling between visual information and body sway for postural control does not demand attention on a regular basis, but any change in this relationship demands attention and occurs in less demanding postural tasks.

The interaction between cognition and motor control: A theoretical framework for dual-task interference effects on posture, gait initiation, gait and turning

“…Posture has been defined as the spatial organization of the body segments [14,103]. In order to maintain an upright stance, the central nervous system (CNS) integrates a variety of sensory cues from visual, somatosensory and vestibular channels [31,63]. Sensory information may concern the body's orientation but may also be related to force vectors that trigger muscle activity [39].…”

Improved proprioceptive function by application of subsensory electrical noise: Effects of aging and task-demand

“…In order to resolve a sensory conflict situation, the postural control system must constantly reweight the importance of the available sensory cues (Jeka et al, 2008;Barela et al, 2013;Genoves et al, 2016) a functional process that is impaired in older adults (Prioli et al, 2006;Barela et al, 2013;Toledo and Barela, 2014), predisposing them to increased instability and falls. Actually, worse postural performance in the moving room situation was related to reduced kinesthetic perception at the ankle joint (Toledo and Barela, 2014).…”

Peer Review #2 of "People in early stages of Parkinson’s disease are able to intentionally reweight the use of visual information for postural control (v0.2)"

“…As previously mentioned, manipulation of the visual information, in conditions of small amplitude and low velocity, induces corresponding body sway without the person consciously discriminating the manipulation, as already previously observed (Freitas Júnior & Barela, 2004;Barela et al, 2009). Because participants were not perceptually aware of the visual manipulation, it might be suggested that the sensorimotor system operates in an automatic control model (Stoffregen et al, 2006) or, as recently suggested, in an intrinsic dynamic mode, which requires minimum, if any, involvement of higher centers of the Central Nervous System (CNS) to interpret changes in the environment and then plan and control the appropriate postural responses (Genoves et al, 2016). Automatic control is a useful mechanism because it allows the CNS to allocate attentional and cognitive resources to perform other tasks that are not related to postural control.…”

“…Besides observing that people with PD can down weight visual influence, our results showed no difference between people with and without PD. Considering that reduction in visual influence requires attentional efforts (Aguiar et al, 2014;Genoves et al, 2016), our result suggests that people in early stages of PD can allocate attentional resources to alter sensory cue influences on postural control tasks. This possible important use of attention by patients with PD is surprising and needs to be further investigated.…”