Elderly Use Proprioception Rather than Visual and Vestibular Cues for Postural Motor Control

Abstract

Multiple factors have been proposed to contribute to the deficits of postural control in the elderly. They were summarized as sensory, motor, and higher-level adaptation deficits. Using a model-based approach, we aimed to identify which of these deficits mainly determine age-related changes in postural control. We analyzed postural control of 20 healthy elderly people with a mean age of 74 years. The findings were compared to data from 19 healthy young volunteers (mean age 28 years) and 16 healthy middle-aged volunteers (mean age 48 years). Postural control was characterized by spontaneous sway measures and measures of perturbed stance. Perturbations were induced by pseudorandom anterior–posterior tilts of the body support surface. We found that spontaneous sway amplitude and velocity were significantly larger, and sway frequencies were higher in elderly compared to young people. Body excursions as a function of tilt stimuli were clearly different in elderly compared to young people. Based on simple feedback model simulations, we found that elderly favor proprioceptive over visual and vestibular cues, other than younger subjects do. Moreover, we identified an increase in overall time delay challenging the feedback systems stability, and a decline in the amplitude of the motor feedback, probably representing weakness of the motor system. In general, these parameter differences between young and old may result from both deficits and compensation strategies in the elderly. Our model-based findings correlate well with deficits measured with clinical balance scores, which are widely used in clinical practice.

Age-Related Vestibular Loss: Current Understanding and Future Research Directions

“…One factor in balance dysfunction may be changes in the robustness of peripheral vestibular signaling in the elderly (11). Another factor may be changes in how sensory information is processed by central circuits, as exemplified by a study which found that compared with younger subjects, the elderly favor the use of proprioceptive rather than visual and vestibular cues for postural motor control (12). Overall, there is an age-related decline of peripheral vestibular sensing and the central combination of different sensory signals for balance.…”

The Association between Foot Morphology and Dynamic Balance Performance as Measured by the Star Excursion Balance Test

“…Previous studies indicate, however, that performance on the SEBT is expected to be fairly consistent between men and women when the reach distance has been normalized to leg length [25]. Also, while changes in postural control in the elderly are well documented [26], they are less established for young adults and middle-aged adults [27]. Yet Bouillon and Baker [28] found differences in reach distance on the SEBT between young and middle-age recreationally active women but our study was not powered to test for these differences.…”

Towards disappearing user interfaces for ubiquitous computing: human enhancement from sixth sense to super senses

“…Sensory adaptation causes sensitivity adjustment which adapts to the recent perception experience (Webster 2012;Roseboom et al 2015). Sensory changes occur if there is undue impairment on the sensory system, or a change in human weight (Skrandies and Zschieschang 2015), or most commonly when the sensitivity declines due to ageing (Wiesmeier et al 2015;Humes 2015). Multisensory integration, acts as a fusion of sensory data, helps increase the accuracy of perception but the application is normally restricted to adults since the development of sensor fusion for humans only starts in preteen years (Nardini et al 2010).…”