Functional Control of Stance in Older Adults

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Stoffregen
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Postural Sway ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Laboratory Research ◽  
Body Sway ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Functional Control ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Definition Of

It is widely assumed that healthy aging includes a decline in the stability of standing body sway. Certainly, the spatial magnitude of postural sway increases with age. However, the interpretation of this effect as a decline in the ability to stabilize posture rests, in part, on assumptions about the nature and definition of stability in stance. In this article, I review data on the control of standing posture in healthy older adults. I focus on a growing list of studies that demonstrate the retention, among healthy older adults, of the ability functionally to modulate postural sway in support of “suprapostural” activities. I address laboratory research, but also field studies carried out in a setting that dramatically challenges the control of stance: life on ships at sea. I argue that it may be possible, and certainly will be useful, to address directly the functional control of stance in older adults.

Postural sway with earth-fixed and body-referenced finger contact in young and older adults

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-109
Author(s):  
Reginald L. Reginella ◽  
Mark S. Redfern ◽  
Joseph M. Furman
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Postural Sway ◽  
Center Of Pressure ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Body Sway ◽  
Support Surface ◽  
Proprioceptive Information ◽  
Postural Control System ◽  
Fixed Reference ◽  
Older Subjects

Sensory information from lightly touching a reference with the hand is known to influence postural sway in young adults. The primary aim of this study was to compare the influence of finger contact (FC) with an earth-fixed reference to the influence of FC with a body-fixed reference. A second goal of this study was to determine if FC is used differently by older adults compared to younger adults. Using a force plate, center of pressure at the feet was recorded from blindfolded young and older subjects during several conditions. Subjects either did or did not lightly touch a force-sensitive plate that was either earth-fixed or moved forward and backward in synchrony with body sway (that is, sway-referenced). In addition, support surface conditions were also varied, including a fixed floor and a sway-referenced floor using an EquitestTM. Results showed that the type of FC, floor condition, and age each had an effect on postural sway. Touching an earth-fixed plate decreased postural sway as compared to no touching, while touching a sway-referenced plate incresased sway. This influence of FC was enhanced when the floor was sway-referenced. Although older subjects swayed more than young subjects overall, no age-FC interactions occurred, indicating that FC was not utilized differently between the age groups. This study suggests that FC cannot be disregarded as erroneous, especially when proprioceptive information from the legs is distorted. Further, FC is integrated with other sensory information by the postural control system similarly in young and older persons.

scholarly journals Slowed sensory reweighting and postural illusions in older adults: the moving platform illusion

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 690-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chesney E. Craig ◽  
Michail Doumas
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Postural Sway ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Sensory Reweighting ◽  
Perceptual Illusion ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Stable Conditions ◽  
Illusory Perception

We investigated whether postural aftereffects witnessed during transitions from a moving to a stable support are accompanied by a delayed perception of platform stabilization in older adults, in two experiments. In experiment 1, postural sway and muscle cocontraction were assessed in 11 healthy young, 11 healthy older, and 11 fall-prone older adults during blindfolded stance on a fixed platform, followed by a sway-referenced platform and then by a fixed platform again. The sway-referenced platform was more compliant for young adults, to induce similar levels of postural sway in both age groups. Participants were asked to press a button whenever they perceived that the platform had stopped moving. Both older groups showed significantly larger and longer postural sway aftereffects during platform stabilization compared with young adults, which were pronounced in fall-prone older adults. In both older groups elevated muscle cocontraction aftereffect was also witnessed. Importantly, these aftereffects were accompanied by an illusory perception of prolonged platform movement. After this, experiment 2 examined whether this illusory perception was a robust age effect or an experimental confound due to greater surface compliance in young adults, which could create a larger perceptual discrepancy between moving and stable conditions. Despite exposure to the same surface compliance levels during sway-reference, the perceptual illusion was maintained in experiment 2 in a new group of 14 healthy older adults compared with 11 young adults. In both studies, older adults took five times longer than young adults to perceive platform stabilization. This supports that sensory reweighting is inefficient in older adults. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This is the first paper to show that postural sway aftereffects witnessed in older adults after platform stabilization may be due to a perceptual illusion of platform movement. Surprisingly, in both experiments presented it took older adults five times longer than young adults to perceive platform stabilization. This supports a hypothesis of less efficient sensory reintegration in this age group, which may delay the formation of an accurate postural percept.

scholarly journals Effects of age and task difficulty on postural sway, variability and complexity

2020 ◽  
pp. 105971232096397
Author(s):  
Mohsen Shafizadeh ◽  
Shahab Parvinpour ◽  
Marzie Balali ◽  
Mohsen Shabani
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Postural Sway ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Force Plate ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Physical Challenges ◽  
Different Levels

This study aimed to examine the effects of age and the task difficulty on postural sway, variability and complexity. The participants were 90 able-bodied individuals including children ( n = 39; age: 5.89 ± 0.94 years), young adults ( n = 30; age: 23.23 ± 1.61 years) and older adults ( n = 21; age: 64.59 ± 5.24 years) who took part in different balance tasks that had different levels of cognitive and physical challenges. The main dependent variables were postural sway area, postural variability and postural complexity. The participants stood on a standard force plate for 10 s in each task condition, and the centre of pressure displacement was collected at 100-Hz sampling frequency. The results of this study showed that children and older adults, in the more difficult tasks, had greater sway area and complexity and less postural variability. In addition, there was a linear trend in the stability measures as the difficulty of the task was increased. In conclusion, special populations, such as children and older adults, were more sensitive to the balance changes and used active control mechanisms to minimise the risk of losing balance in more challenging conditions.

scholarly journals Keep Up the Pace: Declines in Simple Repetitive Timing Differentiate Healthy Aging from the Earliest Stages of Alzheimer's Disease

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 1052-1063 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley S. Bangert ◽  
David A. Balota
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Error Correction ◽  
Control Systems ◽  
Attentional Control ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Performance Variability ◽  
Timing Task

AbstractThe current study examined whether healthy older adults (OA) and individuals at the earliest stages of dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) differ from younger adults (YA) and from each other on a simple, extended continuous tapping task using intervals (500 ms, 1000 ms, and 1500 ms) thought to differentially engage attentional control systems. OA groups sped up their tapping at the slowest target rate compared to the YA; this pattern was magnified in the early stage DAT groups. Performance variability appeared especially sensitive to DAT-related changes, as reliable differences between healthy OA and very mild DAT individuals emerged for multiple tap rates. These differences are proposed to result from breakdowns in attentional control that disrupt error-correction processes and the ability to resolve discrepancies between internally-generated temporal expectancies and the external temporal demands of the repetitive timing task. (JINS, 2012, 18, 1–12)

scholarly journals Loss of Peripheral Sensory Function Explains Much of the Increase in Postural Sway in Healthy Older Adults

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Anson ◽  
Robin T. Bigelow ◽  
Bonnielin Swenor ◽  
Nandini Deshpande ◽  
Stephanie Studenski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Postural Sway ◽  
Sensory Function ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Peripheral Sensory

scholarly journals Motor planning of vertical arm movements in healthy older adults: does effort optimization persist with aging?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Poirier ◽  
Charalambos Papaxanthis ◽  
France Mourey ◽  
Jeremie Gaveau
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Peak Velocity ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Adverse Outcomes ◽  
The Body ◽  
Vertical Movements ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Arm Reaching ◽  
Directional Asymmetries

AbstractSeveral sensorimotor modifications are known to occur with aging, possibly leading to adverse outcomes such as falls. Recently, some of those modifications have been proposed to emerge from motor planning deteriorations. Motor planning of vertical movements is thought to engage an internal model of gravity to anticipate its mechanical effects on the body-limbs and thus to genuinely produce movements that minimize muscle effort. This is supported, amongst other results, by direction-dependent kinematics where relative durations to peak accelerations and peak velocity are shorter for upward than for downward movements. The present study compares motor planning of fast and slow vertical arm reaching movements between eighteen young (24 ± 3 years old) and seventeen older adults (70 ± 5 years old). We found that older participants still exhibit directional asymmetries (i.e., differences between upward and downward movements), indicating that optimization processes during motor planning persist with healthy aging. However, the size of these differences was increased in older participants, indicating that gravity-related motor planning changes with age. We discuss this increase as the possible result of an overestimation of gravity torque or increased weight of the effort cost in the optimization process. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that feedforward processes and, more precisely, optimal motor planning, remain active with healthy aging.

scholarly journals Functional Brain Changes Associated with Cognitive Training in Healthy Older Adults: A Preliminary ALE Meta-Analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryant M. Duda ◽  
Lawrence Sweet
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Middle Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Precentral Gyrus ◽  
Healthy Older Adults

Accumulating evidence suggests that cognitive training (CT) programs may provide healthy older adults (OAs) with cognitive benefits that are accompanied by alterations in neural activity. The current review offers the first quantitative synthesis of the available literature on the neural effects of CT in healthy aging. It was hypothesized that OAs would evidence increased and decreased neural activations across various challenging CTs, and that these effects would be observed as significantly altered clusters within regions of the frontoparietal network (FPN). Online databases and reference lists were searched to identify peer-reviewed publications that reported assessment of neural changes associated with CT programs in healthy OAs. Among the 2097 candidate studies identified, 14 studies with a total of 238 participants met inclusionary criteria. GingerALE software was used to quantify neural effects in a whole-brain analysis. The activation likelihood estimation technique revealed significant increases in activation following CT in the left hemisphere middle frontal gyrus, precentral gyrus, and posterior parietal cortex, extending to the superior occipital gyrus. Two clusters of diminished neural activity following CT were identified within the right hemisphere middle frontal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus, extending to the superior temporal gyrus. These results provide preliminary evidence of common neural effects of different CT interventions within regions of the FPN. Findings may inform future investigations of neuroplasticity across the lifespan, including clinical applications of CT, such as assessing treatment outcomes.

scholarly journals Fractional Anisotropy in Selected, Motor-Related White Matter Tracts and Its Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Associations With Motor Function in Healthy Older Adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Oschwald ◽  
Susan Mérillat ◽  
Lutz Jäncke ◽  
Rachael D. Seidler
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Motor Function ◽  
Motor Performance ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Motor Speed ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
White Matter Tracts ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Level Change

BackgroundWhile it is well-known that deficits in motor performance and brain structural connectivity occur in the course of healthy aging, it is still unclear if and how these changes are related to each other. While some cross-sectional studies suggest that white matter (WM) microstructure is positively associated with motor function in healthy older adults, more evidence is needed. Moreover, longitudinal data is required to estimate whether similar associations can be found between trajectories of change in WM microstructure and motor function. The current study addresses this gap by investigating age-associations and longitudinal changes in WM microstructure and motor function, and the cross-sectional (level-level) and longitudinal (level-change, change-change) association between these two domains.MethodWe used multiple-occasion data (covering 4 years) from a large sample (N = 231) of healthy older adults from the Longitudinal Healthy Aging Brain (LHAB) database. To measure WM microstructure, we used diffusion-weighted imaging data to compute mean FA in three selected WM tracts [forceps minor (FMIN); superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF); corticospinal tract (CST)]. Motor function was measured via two motor speed tests (grooved pegboard, finger tapping) and one motor strength test (grip force test), separately for the left and the right hand. The statistical analysis was conducted with longitudinal growth curve models in the structural equation modeling framework.ResultsThe results revealed longitudinal decline and negative cross-sectional age-associations for mean WM FA in the FMIN and SLF, and for motor function in all tests, with a higher vulnerability for left than right hand motor performance. Regarding cross-domain associations, we found a significant positive level-level correlation among mean WM FA in the FMIN with motor speed. Mean FA in SLF and CST was not correlated with motor performance measures, and none of the level-change or change-change associations were significant. Overall, our results (a) provide important insights into aging-related changes of fine motor abilities and FA in selected white matter tracts associated with motor control, (b) support previous cross-sectional work showing that neural control of movement in older adults also involves brain structures outside the core motor system and (c) align with the idea that, in healthy aging, compensatory mechanisms may be in place and longer time delays may be needed to reveal level-change or change-change associations.

scholarly journals Impaired sensitivity to spatial configurations in healthy aging

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Chard ◽  
Richard Cook ◽  
Clare Press
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Face Processing ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Drift Diffusion ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Configural Information ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Spatial Configurations ◽  
Social Difficulties

Studies have found age-related deficits in face processing, including identity and emotion recognition. It is unclear what underlies such atypicalities, and why older adults are unaffected in other apparently similar perceptual tasks. The present study examined the possibility that particular deficits in configural processing impair the perception of faces in healthy aging. Across two signal detection experiments, we required a group of healthy older adults and matched younger adults to detect changes in images of faces that could differ either at the local, featural level, or in configuration of these features. In support of our hypothesis, older adults were particularly impaired in detecting configural changes, relative to detecting changes in features. The impairments were found for both upright and inverted faces and were similar in a task with images of inanimate objects (houses). Drift diffusion modelling suggested that this decline related to reduced evidence accumulation rather than a tendency to make configural judgments based on less evidence. These findings indicate that domain-general problems processing configural information contribute to the difficulties with face processing in healthy aging, and may in principle also contribute to a range of higher-level social difficulties.

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