Understanding the Experiences of Rural Community-Dwelling Older Adults in Using a New DVD-Delivered Otago Exercise Program: A Qualitative Study.

Background: The home-based Otago Exercise Program (OEP) has been shown to reduce the occurrence of falls in community-dwelling seniors. A new OEP DVD was recently developed for people living in rural communities to be used with minimal coaching by a physical therapist.

Objective: This study aimed to understand older adults' experiences using the DVD-delivered OEP and explore barriers and facilitators to implementing the DVD-delivered OEP from the participants' perspectives.

Increased cognitive load leads to impaired mobility decisions in seniors at risk for falls.

Successful mobility requires appropriate decision-making. Seniors with reduced executive functioning-such as senior fallers-may be prone to poor mobility judgments, especially under dual-task conditions. We classified participants as "At-Risk" and "Not-At-Risk" for falls using a validated physiological falls-risk assessment.

Age-related changes in the attentional control of visual cortex: a selective problem in the left visual hemifield.

To what extent does our visual-spatial attention change with age? In this regard, it has been previously reported that relative to young controls, seniors show delays in attention-related sensory facilitation. Given this finding, our study was designed to examine two key questions regarding age-related changes in the effect of spatial attention on sensory-evoked responses in visual cortex--are there visual field differences in the age-related impairments in sensory processing, and do these impairments co-occur with changes in the executive control signals associated with visual spatial orienting? Therefore, our study examined both attentional control and attentional facilitation in seniors (aged 66-74 years) and young adults (aged 18-25 years) using a canonical spatial orienting task. Participants responded to attended and unattended peripheral targets while we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to both targets and attention-directing spatial cues.

Are impairments in visual-spatial attention a critical factor for increased falls risk in seniors? An event-related potential study.

Falls are experienced annually by approximately one third of community dwellers over the age of 65, and while neuro-cognitive deficits have been shown to increase falls risk, the specific nature of these deficits remain unspecified. Here we examined whether visual-spatial attention may be a core neuro-cognitive system showing abnormal function in fallers. Using a between-groups design, we recorded event-related potentials in a canonical spatial cuing task performed by two groups of senior (aged 65+ years old) participants: those with a recent history of falls and those with no such history.

The beneficial effects of group-based exercises on fall risk profile and physical activity persist 1 year postintervention in older women with low bone mass: follow-up after withdrawal of exercise.

Objectives: To determine whether exercise-induced reductions in fall risk are maintained in older women 1 year after the cessation of three types of interventions--resistance training, agility training, and general stretching.

Design: One-year observational study.

Setting: Community.

Both resistance and agility training reduce back pain and improve health-related quality of life in older women with low bone mass.

The purpose of the study was to compare the effects of three different types of group-based exercise programs (resistance training, agility training and general stretching) on back pain and health-related quality of life in older (aged 75-85 years) community-dwelling women with low bone mass (i.e., osteopenia or osteoporosis).

Both resistance and agility training increase cortical bone density in 75- to 85-year-old women with low bone mass: a 6-month randomized controlled trial.

A randomized, controlled, single-blinded 25-wk prospective study was conducted to compare the effects of group-based resistance and agility training on bone, as measured by both dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT), in older women with low bone mass. Ninety-eight community-dwelling women aged 75-85 yr were randomized to one of three experimental groups: resistance training (n = 32), agility training (n = 34), or stretching (sham exercise) (n = 32). Total hip, femoral neck, and trochanteric bone mineral density (BMD) were measured by DXA.