Neural control and its impairment of flexible stability during human bipedal standing and walking

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We have proposed recently that human upright standing is stabilized in a flexible and robust manner by an intermittent control. In this study, we provided several evidences that support our hypothesis based on mathematical models of postural control and psychophysical experiments. We discussed possibility that a loss of intermittency in the neural control can be a cause of postural instability in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Moreover, we investigated a gait symptom called freezing of gait in PD patients, and suggested that a forceful but noisy neural control of interlimb coordination can be a main cause of the freezing of gait.