Dual task iTUG to investigate increased fall risk among older adults with bilateral hearing loss.

Objectives: To investigate fall risk among older adults with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss (BHL) by comparing single task (ST) and dual task (DT) performance on the instrumented "Timed Up & Go" test (iTUG). The TUG is a well-validated clinical tool for fall risk; addition of wireless sensors increases the test's sensitivity and allows for subcomponent analysis.

Methods: Adults with audiometrically confirmed normal hearing or BHL were prospectively recruited and screened for visual, musculoskeletal, neurologic, or vestibular pathology and Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI) < 10.

Type of auditory cues and apparatus influence how healthy young adults integrate sounds for dynamic balance.

It is unclear whether the brain handles auditory cues similarly to visual cues for balance. We investigated the influence of headphones and loudspeaker reproduction of sounds on dynamic balance performance when an individual is facing a cognitive challenge. Twenty participants (16 females, aged 19-36) were asked to avoid a ball according to a specific visual rule.

Postural Control under Cognitive Load: Evidence of Increased Automaticity Revealed by Center-of-Pressure and Head Kinematics.

How postural responses change with sensory perturbations while also performing a cognitive task is still debatable. This study investigated this question via comprehensive assessment of postural sway, head kinematics and their coupling. Twenty-three healthy young adults stood in tandem with eyes open or wearing the HTC Vive Head-Mounted Display (HMD) with a static or dynamic (i.

Factors associated with dynamic balance in people with Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness (PPPD): a cross-sectional study using a virtual-reality Four Square Step Test.

Background: Persistent postural-perceptual dizziness (PPPD) is a condition characterized by chronic subjective dizziness and exacerbated by visual stimuli or upright movement. Typical balance tests do not replicate the environments known to increase symptoms in people with PPPD-crowded places with moving objects. Using a virtual reality system, we quantified dynamic balance in people with PPPD and healthy controls in diverse visual conditions.

People with persistent postural-perceptual dizziness demonstrate altered postural strategies in complex visual and cognitive environments.

Background: People with PPPD report imbalance, increase in symptoms and impaired function within complex visual environments, but understanding of the mechanism for these behaviors is still lacking.

Objective: To investigate postural control in PPPD we compared changes in center of pressure (COP) and head kinematics of people with PPPD (N = 22) and healthy controls (N = 20) in response to different combinations of visual and cognitive perturbations during a challenging balance task.

Methods: Participants stood in a tandem position.

Auditory Input and Postural Control in Adults: A Narrative Review.

Importance: An increase in the number of mechanistic studies targeting the association between sound and balance has been observed in recent years, but their results appear equivocal.

Observations: A search of PubMed and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for English-language studies on auditory input and postural control published from database inception through October 31, 2019, yielded 28 articles for review. These articles included 18 (64%) studies of healthy adults, 1 (4%) of participants with Alzheimer disease, 2 (7%) of participants with congenital blindness, 3 (11%) of participants with vestibular loss, and 4 (14%) of participants with diverse levels of hearing loss.

Depressive symptoms may increase the risk of the future development of freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson's disease: Findings from a 5-year prospective study.

Introduction: Prospective studies identifying predictors of freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson's disease (PD) are limited. We aim to explore which symptoms are associated with future development of FOG in non-freezers.

Methods: Fifty-seven PD patients without FOG at baseline were re-evaluated after a mean of five years.