Citation

Lin CC, Whitney SL, Loughlin PJ, Furman JM, Redfern MS, Sienko KH, Sparto PJ. J. Neurophysiol. 2015; 113(7): 2127-2136.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, American Physiological Society)

DOI

10.1152/jn.00083.2014

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Vibrotactile feedback (VTF) has been shown to improve balance performance in healthy people and people with vestibular disorders in a single-task experimental condition. It is unclear how age-related changes in balance affect the ability to use VTF, and if there are different attentional requirements for older and young adults when using VTF. Twenty younger and twenty older subjects participated in this two-visit study in order to examine the effect of age, VTF, sensory condition, cognitive task, duration of time, and visit on postural and cognitive performance. Postural performance outcome measures included root-mean-square of center of pressure (COP) and trunk tilt, and cognitive performance was assessed using the reaction time from an auditory choice reaction time task. The results showed that compared with young adults, older adults had an increase in COP in fixed platform conditions when using VTF, although they were able to reduce COP during sway-referenced platform conditions. Older adults also did not benefit fully from using VTF in their first session. The reaction times for the secondary cognitive tasks increased significantly while using the VTF in both younger and older adults. Older adults had a larger increase compared with young adults, suggesting greater attentional demands were required in older adults when using VTF information. Future training protocols for VTF should take into consideration the effect of aging.

Language: en