Elsevier

Gait & Posture

Volume 65, Supplement 1, September 2018, Page 386
Gait & Posture

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P 095 - Age-related differences in dynamic postural responses to soleus muscle vibration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2018.06.067Get rights and content

Introduction

Postural stability impairments often occur with increasing age. Especially in elderly, balance problems and increased incidence of falls has been associated with decreased functional ability to adapt to altered sensory conditions. Many studies have been focused mainly on balance changes under steady-state conditions, and less is known about the dynamic changes in balance following sudden transition to different sensory inputs.

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Research question

The aim was to clarify age-related changes of dynamic postural responses immediately after lower leg muscle stimulation offset. Sudden removing of supplementary active sensory input represents a transient period in balance control.

Methods

We examined postural responses of 13healthy young (age range 22–30) and 13 healthy older (age range 64–78) adults to proprioceptive bilateral vibration of soleus muscles during stance with 1) eyes open and 2) eyes closed, randomly repeated four times. Body sway was assessed by a force platform and two accelerometers attached on the upper and the lower trunk. The duration of each trial was 20 s; the vibration lasted 8 s with the frequency 60 Hz and amplitude 1 mm. We analyzed parameters in

Results

The bilateral soleus muscle vibration induced rapid backward body lean in all participants with larger backward CoP displacement and trunk tilts with eyes compared to eyes open regardless of age. During vibration period, age-related differences were found only in final shift (final position before vibration offset) of trunk tilts. Vibration offset was followed by fast return to the vertical position with overshooting of the initial position in forward direction in all participants, but the

Discussion

The differences between young and elderly were found in most parameters in transient period after vibration offset and also in some parameters during vibration. We can conclude that transient period after removing sensory input is more sensitive for detecting age-related changes. The older adults showed more unstable transient postural responses to selective sensory stimulation switch off, which may reflect impairment of sensory reweighting in balance control. Failure to make timely and

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