Balance perturbation system to improve balance compensatory responses during walking in old persons

Abstract

Ageing commonly disrupts the balance control and compensatory postural responses that contribute to maintaining balance and preventing falls during perturbation of posture. This can lead to increased risk of falling in old adults (65 years old and over). Therefore, improving compensatory postural responses during walking is one of the goals in fall prevention programs. Training is often used to achieve this goal. Most fall prevention programs are usually directed towards improving voluntary postural control. Since compensatory postural responses triggered by a slip or a trip are not under direct volitional control these exercises are less expected to improve compensatory postural responses due to lack of training specificity. Thus, there is a need to investigate the use balance perturbations during walking to train more effectively compensatory postural reactions during walking.This paper describes the Balance Measure & Perturbation System (BaMPer System) a system that provides small, controlled and unpredictable perturbations during treadmill walking providing valuable perturbation, which allows training compensatory postural responses during walking which thus hypothesize to improve compensatory postural responses in older adults.

Figure 1

Photo of the the BaMPer system. The system is compose of a motor-driven treadmill, mounted on a moving platform, motion controller, safety harness and an operator station (see the text for more details).

Figure 2

Photo of the uncovered BaMPer system. The moving platform, linear slides, and two linear actuators which are responsible for moving the platform longitudinally, laterally, or any combination of those directions.

Figure 3

Motion control diagram.

Figure 4

Motion parameters during experiment. Graphs of the position (mm), velocity (mm/sec), and acceleration (mm/sec²) during perturbation experiments are shown. Note those are actual measurements taken during perturbation experiment.