Department of Health and Kinesiology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
Published: January 2020
AI Article Synopsis
Article Abstract
When engaging in manual or visual tasks while sitting, infants modify their postural sway based on concurrent task demands. It remains unclear whether these modulations are sensitive to differences in concurrent task demands (holding a toy vs. looking at a toy being held by someone else), and whether the properties of the support surface impact these adaptations. We investigated infants' ability to modify postural sway when holding a toy or visually attending to a toy someone else was holding while sitting on different support surfaces. Twenty-six independently sitting infants sat on solid and compliant surfaces placed on a force plate while looking at or holding a toy. Measures of postural sway were calculated from the center of pressure data. Visually attending to a toy was associated with less sway and lower sway velocity than when holding a toy. Surprisingly, surface compliance did not affect sway and there were no interaction effects. Whereas sway modulations may facilitate infants' performance on both manual and visual concurrent tasks, the visual task placed more constraints on the postural system leading to greater adaptations in postural sway. These findings provide insights into how infants are allocating attention and coordinating perceptual-motor information in developing sitting skills.
Introduction: Pseudorandom balance perturbations use unpredictable disturbances of the support surface to quantify reactive postural control. The ability to quantify postural responses to a continuous multidirectional perturbation in two orthogonal dimensions of sway (e.g.
Section of Physiology, Laboratory of Neuro-Biomechanics, Department of Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Catania, 95123, Catania, Italy.
Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder, characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication with restricted and repetitive behavior. Postural and motor disturbances occur more often in ASD, in comparison to typically developing subjects, affecting the quality of life. Linear and non-linear indexes derived from the trajectory of the center of pressure (COP) while subjects stand on force platforms are commonly used to assess postural stability.
Motor abnormalities, including psychomotor slowing, are prevalent in a large proportion of individuals with schizophrenia. While postural control deficits have been observed in this population, the impact of motor abnormalities on postural stability remains unclear. This study aimed to objectively evaluate postural stability in patients with and without psychomotor slowing and healthy controls.
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA; Ear Institute, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
Purpose: To investigate how adults with unilateral vestibular hypofunction and healthy controls incorporate visual and auditory cues for postural control in an abstract visual environment.
Methods: Participants stood on foam wearing the HTC Vive, observing an immersive 3-wall display of 'stars' that were either static or dynamic (moving front to back at 32 mm, 0.2 Hz) with no sound, static white noise, or moving white noise played via headphones.
Graduate Program in Physical Therapy, Universidade Cidade de São Paulo (UNICID), São Paulo, Brazil; Motion Analysis Lab, Universidade Cidade de São Paulo (UNICID), São Paulo, Brazil. Electronic address:
Background: Several measures of the center of pressure have been used to describe magnitude and structure of the postural sway in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). This study aimed to examine whether both the magnitude and structure of the center of pressure trajectory can differentiate PD individuals with and without freezing of gait in both On- and Off-medication states and with eyes open and closed.
Methods: Twenty-four individuals with PD (14 without and 10 with freezing of gait) were tested.
