Modeling Sensory Integration and Attention in Postural Control of Older Adults

描述(申请人提供)：跌倒是老年人的一个严重问题，由感觉、运动和认知丧失的复杂相互作用引起。研究表明，老年人需要增加认知资源(即注意力)才能保持平衡。此外，与平衡相关的感觉信息的动态调节在平衡功能中也是重要的。与年轻人相比，改变身体方向和运动感觉信息的环境变化对老年人平衡的影响更大，但尚不清楚年轻人和老年人在姿势控制方面的差异在多大程度上是由于感觉整合的差异。此外，老年人注意和感觉整合的相互作用还没有得到充分的研究或发展。这项拟议的研究将对健康老年人的姿势控制中感觉整合和注意力的交互作用进行调查和建模。我们计划通过修改和应用一个经过验证的感觉加权姿势控制模型来定量研究老年人的注意和感觉调节之间的相互作用，以包括较高认知功能(即注意)的作用，然后进行双任务平衡实验来验证该模型。我们研究的一个中心假设是，需要注意的信息处理任务与适度的姿势挑战同时进行，会将注意力从平衡控制上转移，在我们提出的姿势控制模型中，这可以通过时间延迟和其他与生理相关的参数来量化。这项拟议的研究与公共健康相关，因为与年轻人相比，跌倒在老年人中是一个严重的问题。改变感觉定向信息的环境变化往往会对老年人产生更大的不稳定影响，老年人似乎需要更多的注意力资源来控制平衡。然而，注意和感觉整合之间的相互作用是一个悬而未决的问题。研究这两个因素是如何相互作用的，并建立这种相互作用的模型，将有助于更好地理解它们对平衡控制的影响和老年人跌倒的诱因条件。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Falls are a significant problem in older adults, resulting from a complex interaction of sensory, motor and cognitive loss. Older adults have been shown to require increased cognitive resources (i.e. attention) for balance. In addition, dynamic regulation of sensory information relative to balance is known to be important in balance function. Environmental changes that alter sensory information about body orientation and motion have a greater impact on balance of older adults compared to young adults, but it is not known to what extent differences in postural control between young and older adults are due to differences in sensory integration. Moreover, the interaction of attention and sensory integration in older adults has not been fully studied or developed. The proposed research will investigate and model the interaction of sensory integration and attention in postural control in healthy older subjects. We plan to quantitatively investigate the interactions of attention and sensory regulation in older subjects by modifying and applying a validated sensory re-weighting postural control model to include the role of higher cognitive function (i.e. attention), and then perform dual-task balance experiments to validate the model. A central hypothesis of our research is that attention-requiring information processing tasks concurrent with moderate postural challenges will divert attention away from balance control in older adults, which can be quantified by time delay and other physiologically relevant parameters in our proposed postural control model. The proposed research is relevant to public health in that falls are a significant problem in older adults compared to young adults. Environmental changes that alter sensory orientation information tend to have a greater destabilizing effect on older adults, and older adults appear to require greater attentional resources for balance control. However, the interaction between attention and sensory integration is an open question. Studying how these two factors interact, and developing a model of that interaction, will lead to better understanding of their impact on balance control and predisposing conditions for falls in older adults.