Complexity in motor behavior is a hallmark of healthy systems. The purpose of this study was to investigate postural complexity during development of early motor behaviors and under two conditions. Twenty-two infants participated from 1 to 6 months of age. Linear and nonlinear measures of displacement of the center of pressure at the base of support were used to quantify magnitude and temporal ...

Falls are prevalent reasons for spinal cord injury (SCI). Postinjury fear of falling (FOF) can affect rehabilitation potential. We quantified FOF in 15 men with paraplegia (ambulatory with bilateral knee-ankle-foot orthoses [KAFOs] and elbow crutches) in correlation with their postural control at the center for long-term SCI rehabilitation of a tertiary-care teaching hospital. Our outcome measu...

Postural control requires complex visuo-sensorimotor coordination, and previous studies have revealed that the cortical contribution is very important in the maintenance of bipedal posture in humans. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) could enable us to measure cortical activation during dynamic movements, including balance and postural tasks, and could provide novel insight into the ...

Patients with Parkinson's disease display impairments of postural control most particularly in active, challenging conditions. The objective of the present study was to analyze early signs of disease-related and also age-related impairments in mediolateral body extension and postural control. Fifty-five participants (18 Hoehn and Yahr stage 2 patients in the off-drug condition, 18 healthy elder...

Visual information is used for postural stabilization in humans. However, little is known about how eye movements prevalent in everyday life interact with the postural control system in older individuals. Therefore, the present study assessed the effects of stationary gaze fixations, smooth pursuits, and saccadic eye movements, with combinations of absent, fixed and oscillating large-field visu...

Background: Performance of additional tasks disturbs postural control in elderly. It is unknown, however, how postural control is affected in elderly fallers and non-fallers in a reduced sensory situation. Objective: To compare differences between single and dual tasking in three test conditions; (1) no-vision, (2) under reduced somatosensory information and (3) with a combination of both condi...

Background: Balance disorder is one of the most-studied fields in low-back pain patients (LBP). However, there isinsufficient information regarding the effect of LBP subgrouping on postural control. The purpose of the present studywas to compare postural control between subgroups of chronic nonspecific LBP and healthy subjects during lifting.Methods: A total of 35 men with chronic LBP (19 activ...

Understanding postural control requires considering various mechanisms underlying a person's ability to stand, to walk, and to interact with the environment safely and efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the functional relation between biomechanical and neurophysiological perspectives related to postural control in both standing and walking based on movement efficiency. Evide...

A well-characterized neural network is associated with motor learning, involving several brain regions known to have functional and structural deficits in persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). However, it is not known how MS affects postural motor learning or the neural networks involved. The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of the neural networks underlying adaptation of ...

Purpose. The aim of this paper is to review the published studies on the characteristics of impairments in the postural control and gait performance in diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN). Methods. A review was performed by obtaining publication of all papers reporting on the postural control and gait performance in DPN from Google Scholar, Ovid, SAGE, Springerlink, Science Direct (SD), EBSCO ...