Riding waves to improve functioning: a quantitative evaluation of a Surf Week in individuals with chronic phase brain injury with six months follow-up.

Purpose: Environmental enrichment seems to enable people in the chronic phase of acquired brain injury (ABI) to experience new functional abilities and motor/coping strategies and consequently to become more adaptable which might prevent/reverse functional decline. This study describes the influence of a five-days Surf Week program on participants on physical function, self-efficacy, functional balance performance and self-perceived recovery.

Materials And Methods: A multiple-baseline single-case design was used.

Exploring the role of attention towards balance in chronic dizziness: Development of the Balance Vigilance Questionnaire.

Background And Purpose: Vigilance towards balance has been proposed to underpin various chronic dizziness disorders, including persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD). The objective of this study was to develop (through patient input) a validated balance-specific measure of vigilance that comprehensively assesses the varied ways in which this construct may manifest.

Methods: We developed the Balance Vigilance Questionnaire (Balance-VQ) through patient and clinician feedback, designed to assess vigilance towards balance.

The perceived control model of falling: developing a unified framework to understand and assess maladaptive fear of falling.

Background: fear of falling is common in older adults and can have a profound influence on a variety of behaviours that increase fall risk. However, fear of falling can also have potentially positive outcomes for certain individuals. Without progressing our understanding of mechanisms underlying these contrasting outcomes, it is difficult to clinically manage fear of falling.

Frailty, falls and poor functional mobility predict new onset of activity restriction due to concerns about falling in older adults: a prospective 12-month cohort study.

Purpose: Concerns about falling are common in older adults and often cause activity restriction. This can lead to physical deconditioning, falls and social isolation. However, not every concerned older adult will restrict their activities.

Weighting for the Beat: Using a Dance Cue to Facilitate Turning in People with Parkinson's Disease and Freezing of Gait.

Freezing of gait (FOG) can severely compromise daily functioning in people with Parkinson's disease. Inability to initiate a step from FOG is likely underpinned, at least in part, by a deficient preparatory weight-shift. Conscious attempts to weight-shift in preparation to step can improve success of initiating forward steps following FOG.

Balance capacity influences the effects of conscious movement processing on postural control in older adults.

Older adults rely increasingly on conscious processes to control balance. While this could be in response to age-related declines in balance capacity, it is unclear whether such strategy is adaptive or not. We investigated whether balance capacity modified the effects of conscious movement processing (CMP) on postural control in older adults.

Standing up to threats: Translating the two-system model of fear to balance control in older adults.

The 'two-system' view of fear builds on traditional conceptualisations of emotion; proposing that the mechanisms responsible for behavioural and physiological responses to threat may be distinct from those underpinning the (conscious) emotional experience itself. We empirically tested this notion within a novel, applied context of social and economic importance: fear of falling in older adults. Older adults stood on the edge of a raised platform and were stratified based on whether they reported fear in response to this postural threat.

Short-latency inhibition mitigates the relationship between conscious movement processing and overly cautious gait.

Background: Overly cautious gait is common in older adults. This is characterised by excessively slow gait, shortened steps, broadened base of support and increased double limb support. The current study sought to (1) evaluate if overly cautious gait is associated with attempts to consciously process walking movements, and (2) explore whether an individual's ability to rapidly inhibit a dominant motor response serves to mitigate this relationship.

Consciously processing balance leads to distorted perceptions of instability in older adults.

Background: Persistent dizziness without a clear cause is common in older adults. We explored whether an anxiety-driven preoccupation with consciously processing balance may underpin the distorted perceptions of unsteadiness that characterises 'unexplained' dizziness in older adults.

Methods: We experimentally induced anxiety about losing one's balance (through a postural threat manipulation) in a cohort of asymptomatic older adults and evaluated associated changes in perceived stability, conscious movement processing and postural control.

Conscious Movement Processing, Fall-Related Anxiety, and the Visuomotor Control of Locomotion in Older Adults.

Objectives: Older adults anxious about falling will often consciously process walking movements in an attempt to avoid falling. They also fixate their gaze on the present step rather than looking ahead to plan future actions. The present work examined whether conscious movement strategies result in such restricted visual planning.