Feasibility and reliability of a virtual reality oculus platform to measure sensory integration for postural control in young adults

Abstract

Our novel portable VR platform was found to be feasible and reliable in healthy young adults.

Control Mechanisms of Static and Dynamic Balance in Adults With and Without Vestibular Dysfunction in Oculus Virtual Environments

“…Cybersickness was minimal to none. This was expected from our past work [16,17,21] because of the low latency, mild nature of the scenes, and short duration of each scene. The reliability of balance performance was overall excellent.…”

“…It has been suggested that postural sway tends to become more predictable with any environmental (eg, challenging surface, eyes closed) or personal (eg, older age, disease) restrictions [7]. In our protocol, the vestibular group had somewhat lower SampEn compared with the control group, but the 2 groups had more regular sway compared with young adults [16] (0.4-0.6 in present study and 0.8-1 in healthy young adults study). Note that the comparison of values is made possible, although the assessment was done in 2 separate studies, because we processed the signal in the same manner in the 2 studies (down-sampling by 2, no smoothing applied) [26] and used the same parameters to calculate SampEn (r, m) [27].…”

“…Given the known effect of aging and vestibular dysfunction on sensory integration for balance, we expected the 2 groups to be affected by the visual manipulations [3,4]. Indeed, the 2 groups, on average, had greater postural sway (indicated by a longer DP) in the 2 directions compared with healthy young adults performing the floor part of the same protocol in a previous study [16]. Specifically, healthy young adults had, on average, an ML DP of approximately 250 mm and an AP DP of approximately 500 mm for the stars scene.…”

“…We calculated 1 traditional parameter of postural sway (DP) and 1 nonlinear measure (SampEn), which were found to be reliable in healthy young adults performing our protocol [16]. The center‐of‐pressure signal was sampled at 100 Hz and we used separate custom‐made Matlab (Matlab_R2017a for Macintosh) software (MathWorks, Natick, MA) to process and calculate each measure.…”

Evaluation of Stable Balance Capacity by Using Bosu Ball Surfaces on Different Pressure Levels

“…Studying literature, there is a multitude of studies performed on Bosu ball, in the lower limbs [10,11], for the development of the balance [1,12], for the development of the motor qualities and skills [13][14][15] and especially of the force and postural control [16][17][18].…”